Defying a deadly push off a bridge into the swollen Ganga, angered by a deadlier combination of caste prejudice and greed for dowry that led her husband and in-laws to allegedly push her to what seemed certain death, a young wife swam 40km throughout the dark night and lived to tell.
Apart from Amrita Kumari’s swimming skills, her love of life and for her husband and three-month-old son sustained her for 12 hours in the Ganga’s rushing waters.
When Amrita, daughter of an Aurangabad jeweller, fell in love with Adarsh Kumar Singh of Chapra and married him in December 2009 in Ludhiana, where Singh worked in a call centre, she didn’t realise her in-laws’ opposition to the intercaste marriage and the absence of dowry would prove so dangerous.
She said she was thrown off Patna’s Gandhi Setu by Singh and his uncle on Wednesday evening.
Fishermen at Rasalpur Ganga Ghat in Samastipur district, over 40 km away, saw her floating senseless the next morning and rescued her.
“My husband, his uncle, my mother-in-law and a family friend of theirs took me to the Ganga bridge in the evening in a car. My husband and his friend grabbed my hands while my husband’s uncle and his friend grabbed my feet to throw me down into the Ganga to die,” Kumari told a magistrate on Saturday.
She said Singh’s family was planning to get him remarried to a rich man’s daughter with a dowry of Rs 15 lakh.
With an FIR against her in-laws for attempt to murder and dowry harassment, the accused are absconding. DSP Ashok Prasad said raids are being conducted to arrest all those named in the FIR based on Kumari’s statements.