Radhika and her husband Vemula Mani Kumar were separated in 1990, when she was a young woman in her early 20s. The fights and abuse became worse after after Mani discovered his wife was actually an adopted child, belonging to Mala – a scheduled caste – community by birth and was not a Vaddera as him – classified as Other Backward Classes, or OBC – as he had thought her to be.
“The Vaddera parents with whom my Mala parents left me when I was five married me off to a Vaddera groom. After I had three kids with him, we separated and eventually got divorced," she said.
Radhika doesn’t want to speak much about her Vaddera family and said she deliberately chose not to stay on with them after her separation. Or even about her growing up years and why she was married off at the age of 14.
Even though she was brought up by them till the age of 14, Radhika said she didn’t identify herself as Vaddera and refused to elaborate on how she and her children were treated there, after her marriage broke down. “I decided to move to an SC locality as I am an SC and I wanted my kids to be brought up there,” she said. "It's as simple as that."
But it clearly was not as simple as that, as a detailed report by Sudipto Mondol in the
Hindustan Times, the same day that this reporter met her, made clear. Mondol quotes Sheikh Riyaz, Rohith’s best friend and BSc classmate in Guntur, to fill in the gaps.
“Radhika aunty and her children lived in her mother’s house like servants. They were expected to do all the work in the house while the others sat around. Radhika aunty has been doing household work ever since she was a little girl," Riyaz reveals. If the Child Labour Act had been in force in 1970s, Anjani Devi, the so-called mother of Radhika, could have been charged with keeping a child as domestic help.
Radhika's eldest, daughter Nileema, too didn't want to discuss her maternal grandmother Anjani. When prodded about how it was after her mother's separation from her father, she would only say that she did not have many memories. “Father neither supported in kind nor in cash ever. To an extent, during schooling and initial college days, my [adopted] maternal grandmother helped us financially.”
But clearly the financial help came at a price. What neither Rohini nor Nileema would talk about is explained by Riyaz to Mondol:
"Rohith would hate to go to his grandmother’s house because every time they went, his mother would start working like a maid.”
In Radhika’s absence, Riaz told Mondol, her children would have to take over the housework. This practice of summoning Rohith’s family for housework, Mondol says, quoting Riaz, continued even after they moved into an independent one-room house a kilometre away.
Mondol also quotes Uppalapaty Danamma, 67, one of the oldest residents of the neighbourhood, a Dalit leader and former municipal councillor, who has seen Radhika since she was a little girl. Danamma told Mondol that Radhika was around 12 or 13 when she discovered to her shock that she was an adopted child and a Mala.
“Anjani’s mother, who was still alive then, had badly beaten Radhika and abused her. She was crying near my house. When I asked, she said her grandmother had called her a ‘Mala b****’ for not doing housework and cursed Anjani for bringing her into the house.”
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