Boro Chupria is a small village about 25 km from Krishnagar. It is a pretty village, with its huts of mud, brick and darma, and its grounds are clean. Things look peaceful — and unspoilt. There are no blatant signs of the world outside: only a large haath chhap, the Congress symbol, is drawn on the outside of a hut. Yet this prosperous jute-producing village sends a large section of its men to the Gulf countries.

On December 25, newspapers had reported an incident concerning a young woman from Boro Chupria. She was dragged to Gyanrapota, the village across the main road, stripped, beaten, tonsured and photographed naked because she behaved “like a boy”. The reports suggested that the villagers thought of her as a lesbian. But since spoken Bengali has no equivalent for the English word — samakami not being used in everyday speech — being “like a boy” was perhaps the phrase being used to denote lesbianism.

Mamata Biswas (name changed) was beaten up for allegedly “preying on” another young, but married, girl, who lived in a nearby village. Mamata lived in a run-down brick hut, which stood out from the rest of the houses. As we, a team of reporters, approached her house a week after the incident, an assertive woman in her late 30s came out. She was Mamata’s mother. Mamata, a small, thin girl, dark and very hirsute, with a tonsured head, came out too. She looked stunned by what had happened. She was wearing just a kurta without the salwar. Her mother said she was 16, but she looked about 12. She looked like a boy in girls’ clothes, and stood stiffly, with her head bowed. But her jaws were set when she looked up. She spoke with deliberation.

She said that five days ago, on December 22, Ramakrishna Moitra, a resident of Gyanrapota village, descended on her house and forcibly took her to his house in Gyanrapota. There he, his mother-in-law Kusum and another person called Tarak beat her, tonsured her, stripped her and then photographed her naked, to show the world that biologically “she was not a girl”. Tarak, the alleged photographer, did not develop the film, presumably because he was disappointed. Next day, Ramakrishna was arrested after Mamata’s mother lodged a complaint against him, Tarak and Kusum at Hanskhali police station. However, Mamata, who had stated before the magistrate after the incident that Tarak had photographed her, has told the investigating officer that she cannot identify the man who photographed her. Ramakrishna has not been granted bail.

Mamata said that she was not “like a boy in any way”. She said the girl with whom she was allegedly having an affair was just a friend, who was being tortured by her in-laws and would ask Mamata to visit her. Her mother said the same and removed Mamata’s kurta to show her badly bruised back. “How will I get such a scarred girl married?” she asked angrily. At this point, Mamata lost her self-control and broke into sobs. “Aamar life-tai noshto kore diyechhe ora [They have just destroyed my life],” she cried between sobs and ran inside her house. By this time, a crowd of villagers had collected around the house. “Yes, she looks like a boy,” an old man said. “She had short hair and wore pants. She also rides a bicycle and most of her friends are boys. But we all know she is a girl.” We asked her if she had offended any one with her behaviour previously. At this, the man made a most startling statement: “There was no such incident before, but she was arrested on a murder charge,” said the old man. “A boy from the village was killed three years ago and she was accused of the murder.”

We went back to Mamata’s house. Her mother was reluctant to speak, but said that Mamata had been picked up by the police after a neighbour’s ten-year-son was killed. She added that Mamata had served two terms at the Behrampore and Liluah correction homes for women and children, but was later released on bail. She said she didn’t know why her daughter was picked up for the murder, but said Mamata was friendly with the dead boy’s sister.

We met Mamata again. She said she was innocent of the murder and of any liaison with the other girl, whose father had beaten her up. But when we asked her if the other girl also thought of her as another girl, Mamata said her friend had written her a letter “as a boy”, to which, she replied “as a boy”. “But I want to marry now. It is the duty of every girl to marry.”

This time, too, a crowd had collected. “You can’t leave without speaking to us,” a man said. He made us sit in the courtyard of a nearby house and asked a couple, an old, frail man and his middle-aged wife, to come forward. The woman was holding a framed photograph to her breast, which showed the couple with a good-looking boy. “See this photograph! That girl, Murderer Mamata, killed this boy!” screamed one man. “She is a ‘homo-sex’!” shouted another. The girl, who was assumed to have been victimized because of her deviant sexuality, was being charged with murder.

The parents of the dead boy began to tell their story. The woman could barely speak: “Tanmoy was our only son, born after four daughters,” said Santosh Dhali, the village homeopath, “Mamata killed him because she had a physical relation with my youngest daughter.”

Dhali said he was sleeping outside his house one night, but was woken by a noise. Mamata was staying over, as she often did, with his youngest daughter. When he entered the room, he saw the two girls in a “sexual” position. Next morning he told his daughter, now married and living in a neighbouring village, to end the relationship. He stopped Mamata from entering his house. That enraged her into threatening and beating up his other daughters. On September 12, 2003, the day the boy went missing, Mamata had apparently trailed the boy the whole day, at the end of which they were seen disappearing into the fields. His body was discovered from a pond on September 15. He had been strangled with jute fibre. Dhali’s FIR alleged that Mamata had killed Tanmoy, the go-between for Mamata and his daughter. Dhali had found that out and asked Tanmoy to stop arranging meetings between the two girls. The boy backtracked, and Dhali said that Mamata killed him to take revenge.

The police picked up Mamata on September 20, 2003 She was produced at Salt Lake Juvenile Court, and, after being in correctional homes for about two months, came back to the village on bail. The police “indifference” enrages the villagers: “She is a murderer. She goes after what really matters — the son. She beats everybody up, young men too. But they don’t hit back at her, because after all she is a girl. Her mother says she is a farm labourer, but she is a prostitute and strange women come to her place at night. She is into meye pachar [trafficking of women].” Ramakrishna’s Moitra’s wife said that her daughter was being harassed by Mamata for which her daughter’s in-laws were upset. “That’s why my husband beat her. She has terrorized all the villagers. Only photographing her was wrong.” She pulled out a letter written by Mamata to her daughter. It was a passionate letter: “Last night, I wrote your name across the courtyard. You were sleeping then.” She had signed off, “E.T. Tomar Moner Manush.”

Mamata’s trial is yet to start. Aparesh Das, the deputy panchayat chief of Gyanrapota, said that as the case was sub judice, the local CPI(M)-controlled panchayat could do little: “Although we condemn the incident we cannot go against the villagers.”