Romita Barman in front of her hut. Picture by Abhijit Chakrabarty

Balurghat, Aug. 12: A woman, about 60, was putting a coat of cow dung on her mud hovel — her face strained with poverty at least 13 years old.

Thirteen years ago, her son Sukumar Barman was hanged in Alipore Central Jail.

That was the last time Nata Mullick pulled the lever sending someone plunging down the end of his rope.

“Why have you come to me now? When Sukumar was hanged, there was no one to file a mercy petition for him... There was no activist clamouring for the hanging to be commuted to life imprisonment,” said Romita Barman of Paschim Raynagar, about 2 km from here.

Sukumar and his friend Kartik Sil were sent to the gallows on August 21, 1991. His father, Nagen, who got a life term, died in jail 11 years later.

“Today, some of you are very concerned about Dhananjoy Chatterjee. I feel so sad when I hear people talking about the man in the marketplace and debate over the sentence on television,” said Barman.

Sukumar, Kartik and Nagen were found guilty of killing eight people, including an old woman and a child, all of them relatives. Nagen and his elder brother Habul had been locked in a dispute over the division of their mother’s property. Matters came to a head on July 31, 1987, when the trio went on a killing spree.

They used sharp weapons to murder Habul, his wife Saila, sons Mintu, Hiku, Tinku and Daktar. They did not spare 18-month-old Furfuri. Nagen also killed his old mother.

The verdicts were based on the testimony of one of Habul’s sons, Biswanath, who escaped the carnage by hiding. He died of cancer two years ago.

“I spent four years in jail, and today it pains me to see the hue and cry over Dhananjoy. Why was my son’s crime any more than that of a person who killed and then raped a girl...Where were the rights organisations then?” Barman asked. She alleged that when her husband died, the authorities at the jail in Behrampore did not part with the money he earned by working in prison.

Speaking in a hushed tone after the outburst, Barman said of her four surviving sons two work as labourers in Mumbai and the others live with their families nearby.

Her neighbour Hiranbala Pramanik was of the opinion that a life term was a stronger punishment than death by hanging. “Life in jail would have made them realise their crime and they would have repented till death.”