Vijendra Mahto’s daughter-in-law Kiran with relatives outside their home. (Santosh Singh) Vijendra Mahto’s daughter-in-law Kiran with relatives outside their home. (Santosh Singh)

Vijendra Mahto, his wife, their two daughters, and three sons were sleeping in their one-room mud house in Rampur-Shyamchand, a village in Vaishali district near Patna, on the last day of 2015. According to police records, there was a knock around 1 am on January 1, 2006. Vijendra found Jagat Rai, a local man who he had earlier accused of stealing his buffalo and filed a case with local police, and his associates. They gagged Vijendra with a jute bag, then huddled his entire family on a cot and put kerosene on them. Jagat and his men then put them on fire and bolted the door from outside.

Before Vijendra’s brothers, who lived in the vicinity, could react, the whole family, except Vijendra, was charred to death. Vijendra survived with serious burn injuries. He died a year later. His son Pankaj, now 30, escaped since he had gone to Patna to meet a relative. His eldest sister Reena was with her husband.

Twelve years on, the charred mud house stands replaced with a seven-room Indira Awas Yojana house. Two of the rooms belong to Pankaj, and the others are divided among his four uncles: Vinod, Kiran, Bablu and Vindeshwar.

The Mahtos had not heard that President Ram Nath Kovind has rejected the mercy petition of main accused Jagat Rai, whose death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2013. This is the first mercy petition decided by President Kovind.

“Jaisa kiya thha waisa sazaa mila. Lekin chhote bachchon ko aag mein jala daalne walon ke liye maut ki sazaa bhi kam hai. Humlog President ko dhanywad kehte hai (The accused got the punishment he deserved. But no punishment can compensate burning children to death. We thank the President),” said Bablu Mahtao, Vijendra’s younger brother.

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Pankaj studied up to Class VI. He drives a cart in Patna and comes to the village on weekends to his wife, Kiran, and their three children.

His wife Kiran said, “We married two years after the incident. I have heard tales of my father-in-law’s suffering from my husband. We thank God for justice but now want to live peacefully.”

Kiran’s desperate hunt for a photograph of Vijendra yielded no result: “All his belongings, and memories, were burnt with them…”

Vijendra’s brother Bablu, a daily wage-earner, said: “We lost seven of our family not for the buffalo but their (accused) obstinacy of not paying Rs 1,500 compensation, as decided by Rampur panchayat. We had recovered our buffalo the very next day and caught the thief, Ojir Rai, and produced him before panchayat. As we had to spend Rs 1,500 looking for the buffalo, the panchayat decided that Ojir Rai had to pay that amount, and we were ready to withdraw the buffalo theft case lodged at Raghopur police station. But Ojir, an associate of Jagat Rai, the local muscleman, took it as an ego war.”

For more than a month after the panchayat’s decision, the Mahto family received threats and were abused, Bablu said. “But we never imagined Jagat Rai could plan to wipe out the entire family.”

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Jagat Rai’s family, who faced confiscation of property, left the village long ago, and no one knows where they currently live.

“As Jagat was arrested and the case became important, with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, RJD chief Lalu Prasad and (Union minister) Ram Vilas Paswan visiting us, Yadavs slowly dissociated themselves from Jagat Rai’s family,” Bablu said.

Vinod Mahto, another brother of Vijendra, said the last few months of Vijendra’s life was “very painful — he was bedridden, often getting delirious, recalling that bone-chilling night. He would often ask why his family was killed for a buffalo.”

A police officer at Raghopur police station said, “Buffalo is the fulcrum of this diara (riverine) economy and is often reason for clashes. Those who tracked the case would often refer to the Vijendra Mahto case and ask us to intervene quickly if there is any buffalo theft.”

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