Lying on a charpoy in his house in Haryana’s Ghamroj village, Ashok Kumar says he cannot imagine his life ever being “normal” again.

On 8 September, a year ago, Ashok was wrongly accused of murdering a seven-year-child on the premises of a private school in Bhondsi, Gurugram. The child’s throat was slit, and his body left in a pool of blood.

The murder shook the nation – as a family lost their son. But for Ashok’s family, the loss suffered was real too.

For the last one year, the charpoy has become almost like a second skin to a scarred Ashok, who was once a bus conductor at the private school, but now has lost all motivation.