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Left to fend for herself

— Photo: Vivek Bendre

IN A FIX: Salma Thakrey, near the CST last week.

DOMBIVLI: A scar runs across Salma Thakrey’s left cheek. A small but deep cut parts her chin. These are the visible signs of her once married life.

Life had been different since she had met Sunil Thakrey — her partner and companion for six years. However, on November 26, 2008, it vanished like a mirage. Sunil, 30, was shot dead at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) by terrorists.

He ran a stall selling tea and omelette-pav (bread) near the gates of the CST. “Two bullets hit him, one in the neck and one in the back of the head,” Ms. Salma says.

Ms. Salma and Sunil brought together by suffering. Ten years ago she had fled her home in West Bengal to come to Mumbai, following ill-treatment by her stepmother. She came to Mumbai and got married. It was the beginning of an abusive relationship for her. “He would beat me,” she says, her blemished face bearing testimony to it.

One day her husband abandoned her and she was on the streets. She had two small children, a son and a daughter, from the marriage and no means to feed them. She had been living with her children in a state of utter destitution on a pavement outside the CST, when Sunil spotted her. He gave her the much-needed support, sheltered her and the children from the mean streets and took care of them.

Like Ms. Salma, Sunil too had run away from home when he was 10. He had, however, learnt to eke out a living. The tea stall was one of his many means.

Gradually the children took to him, started calling him ‘father’ and the four became a close-knit family. Content in each other’s company, the couple never felt the need to endorse their relationship by marrying. However, she took his surname. “He used to ask, when we have accepted each other in our hearts, what is the point in marrying?” Ms. Salma says, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“They were very happy together,” says Mohammed Umar Sheikh, in whose room the family lived on rent. He describes Sunil as one with a “very good nature.”

After Sunil’s death, the couple’s unmarried status has become a major problem for Ms. Salma, who is going from pillar to post seeking the Rs. 5-lakh compensation. The authorities do not attest their relationship. With family ties long broken, no kin of either Ms. Salma or Sunil has come forward to claim the money. The only ray of hope is the children’s school records, which have Sunil’s name entered as the father.

The schooling of Ms. Salma’s son, 6, and daughter, 8, is being taken care of by a Christian educational institution in Panvel. “The authorities there are willing to testify that Sunil and Ms. Salma are the parents as per their records and the regular visits the couple paid to the children,” says Mr. Sheikh.

It is still uncertain whether this formal assurance, the subsequent paperwork and the endless rounds of government offices will ever give Ms. Salma her due. She has no money to even commute to the offices to pursue the matter.

She is homeless, penniless, illiterate and naive to the ways of the world. Out of the Rs. 15,000 she received for performing the last rites, she had given Rs. 6,000 to someone for safekeeping. He took off with the money.

The room rent is Rs. 900 a month. Ms. Salma cannot afford it. She is currently taking refuge at a friend’s house. Mr. Sheikh’s family supported her for a while.

A sea of troubles stretches before her. She has to do something quickly. Her children are away, and they do not know that their father is no more. “They ask me, but I have told them that he has gone to the village,” she says.

Their father’s loss will be a cruel shock to them when they return for the holidays. Plus, they do not have a home to come back to.

Misfortune, pain, loss and destitution have put her in a most vulnerable situation yet again.

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