Year after Kanjhawala hit-run horror, family picking up pieces

On December 31, Anjali was on her way home on a two-wheeler when she was hit, allegedly by a grey Baleno car

An uneasy quiet, punctuated by silent sobs, gripped Rekha’s house on a January afternoon this year. It had been a few days since the death of her 20-year-old daughter Anjali on January 1 morning on the streets of Delhi.

A candle vigil for Anjali at Jantar Mantar in Delhi in January. (HT Archive)

Grainy footage of her daughter’s body caught between the wheels of a grey Baleno car – occupied by four inebriated men – that drove 14 kilometres in Sultanpuri, Rohini and and Kanjhawala, had been televised repeatedly.

Read here: Hit-and-run case: Bus driver suspected of causing accident instead of unidentified vehicle

Days after the incident, the cacophony of mediapersons who had camped outside her house for days had finally died down; visits by neighbours and strangers had come to a stop; and it was finally just Rekha with her six children in her mother’s one-room house in outer Delhi’s Sultanpuri.

“Don’t go out without telling me, don’t ever leave home at night, don’t leave me...,” Rekha told her children, as the family came to terms with Anjali’s death.

A year on, the diktat is the same.

Mother plagued by fear for other children

Fear of losing her children has a chokehold on Rekha. “Whether they go to school or a neighbour’s, whether they walk or cycle, I am not at peace till they are back home. I even hoped my sisters would escort my son Varun and daughter Ashika to school, soon after we lost Anjali,” said Rekha, seated inside a one-room rented house in Sultanpuri.

Days after the Anjali’s death, Rekha and her children moved to her mother’s house from their Karan Vihar home. In July this year, Rekha rented a house close to her mother’s.

Ashika, who is in class 9, is upset by the restrictions imposed on her by her mother. “She doesn’t let me step out after 8pm anymore,” she complained.

Rekha has her reasons.

Family lost its sole breadwinner

On December 31, Anjali – the sole breadwinner of the house, who freelanced as an usher with several event management companies, and earned around ₹20,000 a month – was on her way home on a two-wheeler when she was hit, allegedly by a grey Baleno car.

Police said that she fell, and came under the wheels of the car, which dragged her around for nearly two-and-a-half hours, as the accused waited for her body to fall out on its own.

The main accused – Amit Khanna (25), Mithun Kumar(26), Krishan (27), and Manoj Mittal (27) – were arrested, as were Deepak (26), Ashutosh (32), and Ankush Khanna (30), who allegedly shielded the four men in the car. The Delhi police invoked a murder charge against the four main accused, who are currently lodged in jail.

Photos and videos of Anjali’s broken, naked, lifeless body made it to social media, causing outrage and demands for justice. A year later, her sister Ashika still has the photos on her phone.

“I don’t want to see those photos again. This is not how I want to remember my daughter,” said Rekha.

In 2020, as the pandemic swept through the country, Rekha – a single mother – lost her job as a help in a school. It was then that Anjali, her eldest child, gave up her dreams of going to college, and took up odd jobs to sustain the household.

“My daughter was beautiful. She wanted to be a make-up artiste. She was so ambitious that she thought she would even become a politician one day,” recalled Rekha.

When Rekha’s kidney-related ailment flared up, Anjali took care of her; and when the tuition fee of the siblings was to be paid, Anjali scrounged up the money. “She didn’t have a college degree, that’s why she didn’t have a proper job,” said Rekha.

At the time of the incident, Anjali was working with an events company.

Promises of job, other help yet to be delivered

The fateful scooter that Anjali had driven that night is still lying at the Sultanpuri police station as case property. “We had finished paying off the EMIs a month before the accident. I still remember the call I got from the police at 7 am on January 1, the wait at the police station, the murmurs of the cops, and then the news that she had died,” said Rekha.

Struck by tragedy, the family in the last one year has had to make plenty of changes. After the incident, the family moved to Rekha’s mother’s house in Sultanpuri, the children had to change schools, and the family’s dependence on other relatives went up.

“We used to live in Karan Vihar before Anjali’s death, but I couldn’t stay there without support, so I went to my mother’s. Our belongings didn’t fit there, so we rented our own house, for which we pay ₹ 5,000 each month,” said Rekha (39).

A few days after the incident, the family was given ₹ 12.5 lakh by the Delhi government, as well as an NGO. For the last one year, the family has been surviving on that sum, since Rekha is unemployed, and the children are in school. “What will happen when I run out of this money? I go to Maharaja Agrasen hospital thrice a week for dialysis. I don’t have to pay for that, but I do have to bear the cost of medicines,” she said.

In the last one year, Rekha said that she has been admitted to a hospital thrice. “When Anjali was alive, she would take care of her siblings if I was sick... I have to depend on my mother and sisters now. It’s difficult to live without her,” she said, as her eyes welled up.

Rekha claimed that when deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia visited the family soon after Anjali’s death, he had promised that her three teenaged children would attend better schools than the ones they were in. “I have met the local MLA and the counsellor multiple times, but they haven’t done anything,” she said.

Read here: Pedestrian, biker killed in hit-and-run mishaps in Mohali

On January 4, Sisodia told reporters that ₹10 lakh will be given to her family and efforts will be made to provide a job to one of her family members.

Rekha said that her brother was promised a job by Sisodia that would help support her family but even that hasn’t come through yet. “At that time, I wasn’t able to speak, but now I want that job so I can take care of myself and my children.”