Eleven years after she got married, Sushma Maity of Southkhali Jalpai village in Nandigram is today neither a wife nor a widow.

Two years ago, her husband, Bhagirath Maity, went missing when goons attacked a rally taken out in protest against the acquisition of farmland for Special Economic Zone at Gokulnagar in Nandigram.

Bhagirath is one of the 12 persons officially reported missing since trouble began in Nandigram two years ago.

“I still use vermilion and wear conch bangles on my wrists in the hope that my husband is alive,” says Sushma, who lives in a dilapidated mud house.

On the day Bhagirath went missing, armed goons attacked a rally of more than a thousand men and women and took them hostage at Khejuri on the other side of Talpati canal, police sources say.

“I have been waiting since then. On November 11, when nearly 500 people who were taken hostage returned home with bowed heads, I looked for my husband. The procession went on, but he did not turn up,” she says, clutching her minor daughter close to her.

“He told me to cook rice for lunch before going to the rally in the morning. I was late. He told me he would return at noon and eat. But he did not come,” Sushma recalls.

Today, the 28-year-old woman fends for herself, a minor son and a minor daughter by cooking at an ICDS centre, a job given to her by the gram panchayat.

“But how long can we help them? These families of landless agricultural labourers or wage earners are living in dire poverty. The women know only how to cook. The men used to do odd jobs to feed the families,” Ratan Dolui, elected representative of the village in Sonachura Gram Panchayat said. The panchayat is now trying to provide these women concrete shelters under Indira Awas Yojana and jobs like cooking in ICDS centre or schools, he says.

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