NEW DELHI: A father's anguished tears trickled down as he struggled to come to terms with the death of his 19-year-old daughter, Neha, outside Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital mortuary in east Delhi on Tuesday.
"All we want is justice for my daughter," he mumbled. Neha, who had recently started working at an oil company, was a beacon of hope for her family. Her father, Surender Kumar, had also secured a new job at a factory and the family had been looking forward to a brighter future until tragedy struck.
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"I was downstairs doing my chores when I heard a commotion," said Kumar, his voice trembling with emotion. "I rushed up to find Taufiq attacking my daughter. He pushed her off the rooftop and she fell to her death." Taufiq, Kumar alleged, had sneaked into the building dressed in a burqa.
"I tried to save Neha but Taufiq shoved me," the dazed father recounted, stunned as he was by the fact that he had been unable to do anything but scream as his daughter fell to her death. As chaos unfolded on the rooftop, he said he rushed to protect his daughter Neha when Taufiq allegedly grabbed and pushed him to the ground. "After that attack, I couldn't get up. My arm was hurting badly. I couldn't even move to protect Neha," he added.
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Having completed her Class XII, Neha had aspirations of supporting her family, whose members recalled on Tuesday that she and Taufiq had known each other for a few years. Taufiq had once told the family that he didn't have a sister. "She used to consider him a brother and had even tied a rakhi on his wrist," claimed a relative. "Over the years, Taufiq had also grown close to the family."
Eventually, the family discovered that Taufiq did, in fact, have a sister. After this revelation, Neha stopped talking to him, which is when the harassment began. "He would call her office repeatedly and he had been warned to stop contacting her," the mother said.
According to the family, Taufiq had recently started pressuring Neha to marry him. Just a week earlier, he was believed to have threatened her, saying, "Main tujhe kahin ka nahi chhodunga (I'll completely ruin you)." Neha had informed her mother about the threat.
Neha's mother said that she had woken up early and said she was going to wash clothes on the terrace. She also asked her mother to switch on the water pump. "Then I heard screams, people shouting 'Catch him! Catch him!' I saw Taufiq fleeing. He was dressed in black," the mother said. "We had warned him to maintain a pure brother-sister relationship with Neha, but he didn't listen."