Basharat, Kauser Bi’s first husband. Telegraph picture

Bhopal/Ujjain, May 3: Kauser Bi, the woman whose alleged murder by Gujarat police has rocked the nation, was a “dreamer” who believed she was destined to be famous.

But then, life had always been touched with irony and controversy for the daughter of an impoverished poet whose ambition drove her to become a gangster’s wife.

Until 2002, she was Shahnaz, a mother of three who observed strict purdah (hijab) and was married to factory worker Basharat. But the eldest daughter of Bhopal poet and painter Anwar Rasheed “Ajnabi” longed to rise above her conservative and impoverished surroundings.

In 1999, Basharat retired from his job as “helper” with Grasim Industries in Nagda, near Ujjain, and opened a grocery in Khandar Mohalla, Ujjain. After three years of hardship and domestic discord, Shahnaz, then in her late thirties, decided to “break free”.

The same year, she married the extortionist Sohrabuddin against her parent’s wishes and became Kauser Bi.

Basharat is still bitter about being dumped. “I’m not surprised at the kind of end she met,” he said. “She wanted to break free and be modern and in the process, she violated the Shariat.”

He claimed that Shahnaz’s children Ranu, Arif and Imran don’t miss her, either.

In Bhopal, Kauser’s father Anwar and stepmother Shamim Bano painted a different picture of the “bubbly” girl.

In their stone-and-mud slum house, Shamim recalled how Shahnaz was the inspiration for much of Anwar’s poetry, now compiled as a book, Anwar-e-Sukhan (Taste of Anwar).

“Things had become impossible for her in her first marriage. I remember that during the birth of her third child, Imran, she opted for sterilisation as the family had little money,” Shamim said. “She had to leave her children to secure divorce. It was not her fault.”

The frail woman, who makes a living by imparting preliminary religious education — siparah (30 chapters of the Quran) — to neighbourhood children, said: “Shahnaz was always a sort of dreamer. She used to say destiny had fame and fortune in store for her. But look what happened to her.”

Anwar, barely able to hold back his tears, let Shamim to do the talking.

“Over the past year and a half, he (Anwar) searched for Shahnaz everywhere. There isn’t a single dargah in Malwa or Madhya Bharat that he didn’t visit to pray for her safety. Then these TV channels dashed our hopes. He has stopped watching TV or reading newspapers,” Shamim said.

“We were hardly in touch with her since her second marriage — she had come about two years ago to this house. But what happened with her is shocking. Why could they not even give her a decent burial?”

Basharat wouldn’t even pretend to hide his bitterness. “It’s difficult to sympathise with her after what we went through. For four years, I raised my young children and then got married to Rasheeda.”

He said he was so frightened by the news of the fake encounter that he sent his children away to his ancestral house in Nagda.