Gusse ke maare kasai ban gayi main. Main qaatil hoon. Mujhe maar do (Anger turned me into a butcher. I am a killer. Kill me),’’ says Sarita Devi at Dera Bassi police station, waiting to be arrested for murdering two of her daughters.Sarita says she left her home in Mubarikpur village on Tuesday night — with two of her daughters — unable to bear her husband’s torture any longer. Her elder daughter Anuradha (9) and Khusboo (7) were left behind. ‘‘After my death, Pooja (3) and eight-month-old Nisha would have been humiliated. The elder ones would have been taken care of by their grandparents,’’ Sarita says.Sarita strangled Nisha with a cloth and drowned Pooja in a pond on Tuesday night. The bodies surfaced on Wednesday morning. She too jumped in but a cyclist rescued her. ‘‘Why did he save me? I couldn’t bear the torture. For every little thing he (husband Sipahi Lal) used to blame me for not taking care of the children,’’ she says. ‘‘He used to hit me when I didn’t have a child.’’“After the third child, I told him I am not well and we shouldn’t have another baby. But he said my job is just to feed children,” says Sarita. In their one-room home, Anuradha sits huddled beside Khusboo on the charpoy, the only furniture in the house. Khusboo has been running a high temperature since Wednesday night. ‘‘She killed her,’’ whispers Anuradha, barely audible.Sarita’s husband Sipahi Lal, who was at Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, for the post-mortem, said she was lying and that he had never harassed her for giving birth to daughters.
