Saroj Bala Verma with her grandchildren in Ranchi. Picture by Manik Bose

Ranchi, June 1: The gate to the Vermas’ residence at Ashok Nagar was locked at noon on Friday.

It was opened after much persuasion and only after Saroj Bala Verma, a reader in Ranchi Women’s College, convinced herself of the visitor’s bonafides.

Friends and acquaintances, she laments, have stopped visiting the house. They call up to offer support and sympathy. But they are scared of being seen in their company lest they are also victimised and implicated in false cases, she alleges.

The dark family drama began three years ago in 2004, when her son Hitesh, a deputy sales manager with CCL, was arrested for allegedly causing the death of his wife of 11 years, Sanjana.

Medical reports were suppressed and so were facts that Sanjana suffered from acute asthma and disease of the lungs. If Vermas are to be believed, the in-laws wanted the custody of the two children and when Hitesh refused, got him implicated in a “false case”.

And now, after spending 14 months in jail and still fighting five cases in court, the CCL executive’s problems are far from over. Arrested last week for allegedly conspiring to kidnap the son of his sister-in-law from Calcutta, Hitesh Verma was denied bail yesterday by a court at Barasat in North 24-Parganas district of Bengal.

His two children, Abhi (13) and Aishani (7), were still asleep at noon. They were unable to sleep last night, says their grandmother, after learning that their father had fainted in the courtroom and had to be shifted to a hospital.

With her 68-year-old husband, K.P. Verma, camping in Calcutta to secure his son’s release, and her three other children settled in the US and Canada, Saroj Bala has been left alone to take care of the grandchildren.

Giving fent to her feelings, she shows a copy of the FIR lodged against “Ritesh Verma” at Rajarhat police station in Calcutta. But the police drove 400 km, she smiles wryly, to pick up “Hitesh Verma” at 1 am.

He was arrested on the basis of a statement given by the kidnapped boy or his father, she points out, that they overheard abductors speak about Hitesh Verma.

None of the abductors has either been identified or arrested, she points out, nor any evidence produced to establish any link between them and her son.

But although the boy “escaped” from abductors within four hours of the alleged kidnapping, she wonders aloud, neither Bengal police nor the Barasat court appears to harbour any doubt about her son’s complicity.

The children’s education has gone for a toss. Abhi had to be taken out of a school after he got into a fight with boys who abused his father. Aishani is too young to understand what is happening, but both kids have been restive since the arrest of Hitesh. They are finding it difficult to sleep at night and would not have food on their own.

“I can’t even cry lest these children too lose their heart,” she said, trying to suppress her sobs.

If there is no conspiracy to kill her son, she asks, why would Bengal police refuse medicines to him and why would they speed away to Calcutta even after the sadar hospital referred them to RIMS, she asks. He was under medication, says the mother, and it was discontinued ever since his arrest.

Pointing at the children, she works herself up in a frenzy. “They too are relatives of Union minister of state Subodh Kant Sahay. Why is he misusing his office to torture these young children?”

Above all, although the Supreme Court directed in September 2005 that charges be framed against Verma on the basis of “all available documents,” they have still not been framed. Why?