Siliguri, Feb. 11: Sixteen years after Mamata Agarwal’s death had sparked a public outcry in Siliguri, her family’s hopes of justice have rekindled after the additional sessions court took up the case for hearing early this month.

One of the charges against the accused has even been altered from attempt to murder to dowry death. “Better late than never,” said Mukesh Kumar Mittal, Mamta’s brother. “Now that the court has started the trial and hearings are held everyday, we hope that judgment will be delivered soon. We are ready to wait till those who killed my sister are punished.”

Twenty-year-old Mamata of Sevoke Road was married to Binod Agarwal of Chanda Park in Siliguri on July 9,1991. “We had given the groom a lot of cash and household items like furniture and durable goods as dowry,” Mittal said. “Mamata was not even allowed to use the bed and forced to sleep on rugs. We gave them more sets of furniture, but her husband and brother-in-law Pawan and his wife Lata continued to torture her.”

Mittal alleged that Binod had an affair with Lata. “Unable to bear the torture, she had come back to stay with us when her in-laws took her away for a festival,” he said.

The Mittals were called to a nursing home in the town on April 6, 1992 and told that Mamata had consumed poison. “We were not even allowed to meet her at the ICU and she died soon,” he added.

It was only after the preliminary report of the post-mortem was out that the Mittals smelt a foul play in her death. “There were several injury marks on her body,” Anil Kumar Basu, the public prosecutor, said.

“After the examination, the Forensic Science Laboratory in Calcutta concluded that there was no poison either in viscera or blood,” Basu said.

The incident had raised a furore in Siliguri and a Mamata Hatyakand Action Committee was formed. After a complaint had been lodged with the police, Binod, Pawan and Lata were arrested and later released on bail.

On April 28, 1993, Saibal Gupta, head of the department of forensic and state medicine, North Bengal Medical College and Hospital, wrote to the police that Mamata had died due to shock and asphyxia as a result of physical assault, including partial manual strangulation.

Although the trial began in the Siliguri additional sessions court in as early as 1996, it progressed slowly. “During the trial, the domestic help at Binod’s house testified that he had a relationship with his sister-in-law,” Basu said.