Tucked away in the Kumaon hills in Almora district, Mangrukhal is a nondescript settlement of about 60 homes. It's a region where even thefts are unheard of, and villagers are still to come to terms with the sudden spotlight Surindra Koli's doings in faraway Delhi has brought on them.
On January 15, a CBI team from Delhi, accompanied by one of Koli's brothers, reached Mangrukhal, looking for clues. They questioned Koli's kin and those who knew him but came across nothing in his past that would suggest he was mentally disturbed or harboured psychopathic tendencies. His acquaintances say Sada Ram, as he's known back home, was just like other children in the neighbourhood: amiable to his friends and deferential to his elders. "We never had a complaint against him," says Rajan Ram, Koli's neighbour.
Basically Dalits, the Koli community lives on the margins of the village, away from the upper-caste Thakurs. Now they're worried they'll pay for Koli's crimes in Delhi; that it might affect those going from the village and the region to the cities for employment. Most households here have male members working in the plains. "It is a nuisance and a shame," says Bhopal Singh, from the village. "We're people who have nothing to do with such things." "There is a certain fear about how this could've happened," adds Joga Singh Negi, head of the local village mahasabha.
Amidst all this, Surindra's family stands steadfastly by him. This includes his wife, who has just delivered their second child. They insist he has been framed because he is poor and helpless. For others in Mangrukhal, it is the big, bad city that changed the genteel Sada Ram of their village into the cold-blooded, vicious Frankenstein's monster they are now hearing about.
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