Krishnagar, April 18: A father’s dogged battle has put his daughter’s killers behind bars for life.

Aparna Roy’s husband and in-laws were sentenced by a Nadia fast-track court today, two years after she was battered and hanged.

The news reached 55-year-old Rabindranath Sarkar, who works as a mason in Dubai, on the phone.

“Dada, you have won. Those who killed your daughter have been handed life sentences,” his younger brother, Subhas, told him.

“As soon as dada heard about the verdict, he broke down,” said the resident of Rangiarpota village in Chapra, 130km from Calcutta.

In February 2006, Rabindranath, then a farmer in Rangiarpota, had mortgaged his five-bigha plot for Rs 70,000 to get his 19-year-old daughter married to Nripen Roy, a grocer from Swarnakhali in Krishnagunj. He had paid Rs 40,000 in cash as dowry.

But soon after, Nripen, 28, and his parents, Nirod and Gouri, began pressuring Aparna to get Rs 10,000 more. Rabindranath explained to his daughter that he did not have the money.

“When Aparna said this to her husband and parents in-law, they started torturing her. They refused her food and beat her up,” public prosecutor Sukhen Das told additional sessions judge Biswanath De.

On May 7, 2006, Aparna’s body was found hanging in her in-laws’ house.

Nripen informed Aparna’s parents that she had committed suicide. But they smelt a rat when they saw her body.

“Her legs were touching the ground and there were injury marks on her body. I was sure my daughter had been hanged,” said Anita, Aparna’s mother. “My husband vowed to bring Nripen and his parents to book at any cost.”

Rabindranath lodged a complaint with Krishnagunj police and Nripen and his parents were arrested. But the police started a suicide case.

“However, the post-mortem report established that Aparna had been murdered,” the public prosecutor said.

When the murder trial began, most residents of Swarnakhali refused to appear as witness, saying “they didn’t want to spend their valuable time in court”, Das said.

Subhas said his brother promised to pay the villagers for their trip to the court in Krishnagar, 40km away.

But Rabindranath’s resources had dried up. His friends then helped him find a mason’s job in Dubai.

“He would send Rs 3,000 every month to me to monitor the case and pay the witnesses. It was only because of dada’s perseverance that Aparna’s murderers have been punished,” Subhas said.