Murder, the Waravales always thought, belonged to the newspapers. They were a typical middle-class family, living in a Mumbai suburb, going to work and coming back home in the evenings. Till the day their 22-year-old son, Ashish, was arrested for the most gruesome of murders.

Two years ago, Ashish and his 21-year-old accomplice, Clint Fernandes, slit the throat of a 54-year-old housewife, Leticia Mendes. They hanged her 16-month-old grandson, Dylan, from a fan with a telephone cord. And then they stabbed his mother and Mendes’s daughter, Glenda, and left her for dead. But Glenda survived to tell the tale.

On November 25, the Mumbai sessions court ruled that the two boys ? students of prestigious colleges in south Mumbai ? be hanged to death.

The judgement was emotionally charged, especially when the court recalled the murder of what it called the “sweet, innocent child.” And it was poignantly sympathetic to the families of the two convicts, the Waravales and the Fernandeses. “We had never imagined something like this would happen to us,” says Ashish’s father, Dominick Waravale.

Two years after the murder, the Waravales, just like the Fernandeses, are trying to come to terms with the fact that their son is a killer. Questions are being answered, answers sought. Just where did they go wrong in bringing up their sons?

Like any other average Mumbaikar, Waravale would reach home from work by 7 pm. An employee in a development agency, he’d leave for some social service commitments within an hour, only to return by 10 pm. His wife, a school teacher, was home in the evening. “I don’t think we neglected Ashish,” says Dominick. “We had our arguments ? a couple of times he shouted back at me. But we did all we could to be good parents.”

Life has been hell for the Waravales since the murder. Dominick manages to stem his tears, but Ashish’s mother weeps silently. When her eyes welled up in school once, a first standard child went upto her and said: ‘Miss, you’re crying.’

Dominick still believes that his son was a straight-forward boy ? loving and helpful. “He had strong leadership qualities. Other boys flocked to him. He was also good at sorting out arguments within his group.”

Like many others, Ashish got his pocket money from his parents. Dominick doesn’t say how much, but holds that it was enough to help him meet his daily expenses. He had a motor bike and played a neat game of cricket and football.

And at home, he voiced his dreams. “Yes, we did talk to him about his life ? he shared his dreams of being an aeronautical engineer.” Dominick admits that the Waravales didn’t devote all their time to their son. “We had to work to make both ends meet. In the bargain, we never got to know what our children were doing in our absence.”

Ten days after the judgement, Dominick Waravale is still a broken man. But he hasn’t given up the struggle to shield Ashish from the hangman’s noose ? a battle he says he is hopeful of winning. “I have faith in God,” Dominick says. He will go into appeal to the Mumbai High Court.

Meanwhile, Ashish and Clint have been transferred to the Yeravada Central Prison in Pune. But prison is a place that Dominick could never bring himself to visit, even when Ashish was at the Thane jail. Dominick chose to meet him in court during the trial instead. “It was difficult to communicate across the physical barrier and space between us.”

The barrier was not just made of iron. For the Waravales, it came mingled with anger and shame. “In the first fortnight of the murder I did not even want to see him. How could he have done something like this,” he asks.

Dominick believes that he was “misled by Satan.” The prosecution said it was simply money. Posing as students of a catering college, they laid a trap for Leticia Mendes by enrolling in her chocolate-making classes. After the murder, they made off with Rs 75,000 from the house. The boys, the prosecution said, patronised beer bar dancers ? something that Dominick got to know of only through the media.

The Waravales always thought they were like any other family. Sundays were spent in front of the television. Ashish preferred the sports channels and surfing the Internet. A fortnight before the murder, the family had gone on a picnic to Lonavala. Ashish had driven them there. There were the occasional family holidays, too. “But how can one bond on a holiday when it does not happen at home?”

Lack of bonding was something that Dominick would have felt when the judgement was read out. An ashen-faced Ashish, with red-rimmed eyes, sat quietly on the other side of the court-room. The father walked upto the son, not with words of solace ? if there are any in a time such as this ? but seeped in bitterness. “I congratulated him on the judgement,” he recalls. The son looked at him and said, “Don’t worry, Daddy.”