“What will they get by killing him?”: Ram Bai, mother of Nirbhaya convict Mukesh Singh

Mange Lal, who is now deceased, and Ram Bai, the parents of Mukesh Singh, one of the convicts in the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, in December 2012, which came to be known as the Nirbhaya case. Mukesh and three other convicts are scheduled to be executed at 5.30 am on 20 March 2020. Mansi Thapliyal / REUTERS
19 March, 2020

Sixty-eight-year old Ram Bai reached Delhiʼs Tihar Jail at around 4.30 pm on 19 March, expecting to meet her son, Mukesh, for the last time. Less than two hours earlier, a Delhi court had refused to stay the execution of her son. He is scheduled to be hanged at 5.30 am on 20 March.

Ram Bai, a frail old woman of less than five feet, seemed crushed by the finality of the decision. She was sobbing. “It's just that I had hoped for so long, so long,” she said, as tears streamed down her cheeks, and fell on the frayed shawl wrapped around her. “What will they get by killing him, tell me? What will they get? They took away my other son, my husband … Now what will they get by taking him away too?”

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I last met Ram Bai a little after noon on 31 January, when she had visited Tihar Jail for what she then expected would be the last opportunity to meet her son. At the time, Mukesh was due to be hanged on 1 February. “What do I say?” she asked, her gaunt face looking tired. “Who has ever listened to us?” “We are poor, and the poor have no one,” she told me, her voice cracking. “At night, I am unable to sleep … I just keep wondering how my son is, whether he has eaten.” She herself had lost the desire to eat or drink, she said. “Only one worry is eating at me, that what has god done?”