Kumud Mishra, mother of Rupam Pathak. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Jan. 6: Kumud Mishra, mother of Rupam Pathak, today said she had no remorse over what her daughter had done.

“I am proud of my daughter. She taught her tormentor a lesson,” Kumud told journalists in Patna after submitting a petition at the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC).

S.N. Jha, chairman, SHRC, said: “Kumud Mishra submitted a petition at the commission’s office today. We have sought a report from the state government.”

Kumud also visited the state women rights’ commission, said sources.

Rupam was today remanded to judicial custody for 14 days for killing Purnea MLA Rajkishore Keshari.

Kumud called upon all women to come forward to expose those people who were exploiting them on one pretext or the other. “My daughter was depressed after she was denied justice. All her pleas were turned down and nobody was even ready to listen to her grievances,” Kumud said.

She added that the MLA and his men frequently threatened Rupam ever since she lodged a complaint against them at Khajanchi police station in Purnea last year.

She said her daughter’s trauma did not end even after she turned hostile in the court and gave a statement in favour of the MLA and his associates. “Rupam had thought that things would become normal after her deposition in the court. But her ordeal continued even after that,” Kumud said. She said the MLA’s personal assistant Bipin Rai was not a man of good character.

Defending the act of her daughter, who took law into her hands by killing a public representative, Kumud said Rupam took the extreme step out of desperation. “Meri beti ne jo kiya hai, thik kiya hai (What my daughter did is right),” she added.

She also appealed to the top brass of the state administration to take the statement of her daughter in right earnest. “Trust the statement of my daughter and help her get justice,” she said.

She expressed surprise over police’s failure to interrogate the slain MLA’s PA Bipin Rai. “The police simply ignored the allegation against Rai for reasons known only to them,” she said.

Kumud, a resident of Brahmapur village in Naugachchia (Bhagalpur), said that she would try to meet the chief minister to apprise him of the truth. “I have faith in the chief minister. Only he can ensure justice for my daughter. Rupam is fighting a battle against influential persons of the region,” she said, describing how difficult it was for a woman to fight against powerful people.

She said her daughter, a postgraduate in Hindi who also had a BEd degree, knocked the doors of many police officers but nobody helped her because of the political pressure. “Had justice been delivered to her she would not have taken such an action,” the septuagenarian mother said.

She said Rupam was staying with her husband and two children in Manipur before she started a school in Purnea in 2006. Her husband still is a principal at a public school in Imphal.