New Delhi: Every morning at 5 at Badi village in Haryana’s Sonipat district, when most people used to be fast asleep, Kajal’s mother Meena would push her cycle onto Garhi Kesari road. Kajal would run ahead of her — sprinting, jumping and training on the move — while her mother furiously pedalled behind, breathless but determined. Meena had to drop out of school at 14 to support her family. Kajal, she promised herself, would never have to quit studies.Cut to the present. Meena sits on a thin mattress on the floor of her house, surrounded by women from the family. Her soulful eyes often drift to a shelf as she talks to TOI. Two trophies Kajal won as a national-level basketball player sit beside a third, awarded by the gram panchayat, when she made it to Delhi Police in 2022.
It’s been barely a week since Kajal Chaudhary (27), a special cell SWAT commando, died after being battered with a dumbbell, allegedly by her husband — a clerk in the ministry of defence — on Jan 22. She was four months pregnant. Police registered a case of murder and dowry death, arrested the husband, Ankur, and sent him to judicial custody. They are now looking into the role of her in-laws. The irony is haunting. Last year, Kajal had visited her best friend from college after she had been pushed off a terrace, allegedly by her own husband, and left with a spinal injury. Now, the friend has returned to Badi to mourn Kajal.Kajal studied at the Govt Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary School in Gannaur, where her athleticism instantly turned heads. She represented her school at the national level in basketball. She then enrolled at Arya College in Panipat to pursue BSc in computer science, took extra computer courses and attended English-speaking classes for a year. Kajal’s father, Rakesh, used to be a daily-wage labourer. Her mother started working at embroidery units to make ends meet. “Before it took up my job, I would take Kajal out on my cycle at the crack of dawn. We practised running and long jump every day. I never let her miss practice,” a grieving Meena tells TOI. That grit took Kajal to Delhi. After being selected as a cop, she trained at Jharoda and qualified as a commando. Her neighbours and young girls in the village remember her as someone who knew no limit. “She gave her phone number to the girls here and said, ‘If you’re ever in trouble, call me. I’ll come’,” a neighbour recalls. Kajal even gave away her textbooks and would advise the young girls on how to prepare for competitive exams, her aunt, Rekha, says.What no one could gauge at first was what she was enduring behind closed doors after her marriage. Kajal met Ankur, a resident of Gannaur, while she was in college. They dated for years. Her family did not object to it. “Ankur’s father had retired from a public sector bank. He was educated and had a govt job. We thought it was a good match,” her relatives say.The first jolt came 15 days before the wedding. Ankur’s family demanded Rs 1.5 lakh in cash. Rakesh and Meena struggled but arranged the money, believing the jewellery they had planned to give her was enough to keep the in-laws happy.After the wedding on Nov 23, 2023, a new demand followed — this time for a car — her family claims. The pressure for more, they say, was ramped up for over eight months. Kajal was allegedly forced to take multiple loans against her salary to meet new demands. Very soon, she had completely exhausted her finances. Kajal was repeatedly humiliated and harassed for the first three years of marriage, her relatives claim. Just 15 days after giving birth to her son, when she was advised strict bed rest and still recovering physically and emotionally, her in-laws allegedly threw her out of their house in the middle of the night. “Separated from her newborn, Kajal called me up crying. I told her to come home immediately. She stayed with us for a while,” Meena says. Eventually, Ankur apologised, fell to the feet of his in-laws and begged her to return. Kajal went back against the wishes of her parents.“She would leave for duty at 6am, and after a full day’s work, was expected to return to Gannaur just to do household chores. Even while pregnant, her in-laws gave her no rest,” Meena says.Kajal was allegedly thrown out of home again last Aug when she was pregnant for the second time. Her parents still did not know the full extent of the physical violence she was having to face.Throughout Meena’s conversation with TOI, Kajal’s one-year-old son played in his grandma’s lap, too young to know he won’t ever see his mother. “He hasn’t even learned to say ‘mumma’. Kajal used to talk about how excited she was to hear his first word. He would even try to polish her shoes before she went to work,” Meena says, clutching the boy tightly. Kajal’s journey was supposed to take her beyond the job of a commando. “She intended to prepare for UPSC exams once her son started going to school. She wanted to become an IAS officer,” her father, Rakesh, says.The dream will remain unfulfilled.
