CHENNAI: Fifty eight-year-old Balasaraswathi was getting back to the city from her native Tirunelveli when her train stopped near Vriddhachalam early in the morning. She heard that the train wouldn’t move any further as Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Sriperumbudur. The news made her sad but her emotions were swept across by an overwhelming sense of fear – her husband Rajaguru, who was then a police inspector attached to the Pallavaram police station, was part of the security team that was deployed for the rally at Sriperumbudur. “I can’t explain the way I felt sitting in that train. I came to know that my husband was no more only after few hours,” she recalled.The woman recalled the last time she spoke to her husband, when he told her that he had been assigned for duty at Sriperumbudur and that he would not be able to receive her at the railway station. “I lost my husband, my children lost their father. Will the convicts understand the pain of how it is to live without the head of a family and raise two children all alone? They have to be hanged,” she demanded.Balasaraswathi, who with great difficulty, raised her two children Praveen Kumar, who was then 14 years old, and daughter Babita Devi, then aged 16, lived off the compensation of Rs one lakh they received. She had to survive depending on the meagre pension money of her husband. “I think nowadays, even if a man slips and falls from a pavement, he gets a compensation of Rs five lakh. But the government does not want to spend more for the family of police officers, who lost their lives in the blast. Will the convicts know our difficulty? It is a shame that they came to our country, took the help of our people and killed our former Prime Minister. They should be hanged,” the 58-year-old vented out her anger and frustration. Today, Babita is married and Praveen is a sub-inspector attached to the Chitlapakkam police station. “I never wanted my son to join the police department after losing my husband. But he was inspired by his father. Though I left him to follow his dream, I fear every day for his safe return back home,” she said.
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