Kumkum Kumari

After being on the streets since November last year, a 29-year-old woman has found a shelter on Friday — the women’s home at Gai Ghat.

Mother of a two-month-old boy, Kumkum Kumari arrived in Patna from Delhi about 15 days ago and had been loitering around the city until Thursday, when some people and the police took notice of her at Beech Mandir near Nala Road.

On Thursday, the police left Kumari at the mercy of a 19-year-old boy, a resident of Nala Road. However, on Friday, the men-in-uniform took corrective steps and transferred him to a government shelter home for women at Gai Ghat near Patna City.

Kumari, a resident of Banka, who had been married off in Gurgaon seven years ago, is unwilling to go to her parents’ place, nor does she want to go back to her in-laws’ house in Gurgaon. Kumkum, who has a deep injury mark on her forehead, claimed that her husband allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence in Gurgaon, around a week before Diwali last year, after beating her badly in their house near Trimurti Society in Gurgaon.

“I got married to Rajiv Prasad Singh, a native of Gurgaon, around seven years ago. In November last year my elder brother-in-law made my husband drink much more than he could. Under excessive influence of alcohol, my husband hit me with a pressure cooker. I was bleeding badly and somehow managed to run away to Delhi station, where the people took me to nearby government hospital,” she told The Telegraph.

Two weeks later, when she returned home she learnt that her husband had committed suicide. “My in-laws told me that he committed suicide with the guilt that I left him after he hit me,” she said, adding she did not want to go back to Gurgaon as her brother-in-law forced her into an “illicit relationship” with him.

“I cannot go home as my parents are dead and my brother is working as a security agent in Delhi and I do not know his whereabouts,” she said.

On May 16, Kumkum gave birth to a boy at a government hospital in Delhi. It was after this that she reached Patna in a train and, along with her baby, was taken to Patna Medical College and Hospital, where she was treated for two weeks.

Sanjay Kumar, the station house officer at Kadamkuan Police station said: “The woman seems to be mentally unstable. We have shifted her to a women’s home at Gai Ghat. We would enquire about her maternal place with Banka police and try to hand her over to her relatives, if found.”

Ratnesh Chaudhary, a city-based activist, said: “This woman is totally helpless. Even if she is not mentally sound, the police knew that she was wandering in the city for 15 days. Why was she forwarded to the shelter so late?”

An officer at Gurgaon police station said over phone: “How can we find the whereabouts of such a woman, who does not even know her address? Now, action can only be taken by the Bihar police.”