Years after losing their daughters, these mothers battle for justice

On Mother's day, the world celebrates the sacrifice that a mother makes for her children. However, three mothers in India, who lost their daughters to gruesome criminal acts, have no reason to celebrate.

Asha Devi, Sabita Ghosh and Bilkis Bano had to sacrifice everything to get justice for their daughters and have come to symbolise the struggles of a mother. The three women finally found closure, after the culprits behind their daughters' deaths now look at long term prison sentences and some await the hangman's noose.

Asha Devi, Nirbhaya's mother, fondly remembers how her daughter would buy her gifts every Mother's day. Nirbhaya would wish her mother early in the morning and later gift her nail polish from her own money.

"My daughter used to buy me nail polish and bangles. My child would wish me every year in the morning and we would sometimes go out and eat," Asha Devi said.

But on December 16, 2012, her daughter was gang-raped and brutally murdered in the Capital, which sent shockwaves across the world. For four-and-a-half years, Asha Devi would run from pillar to post and organise countless dharnas for her daughter.

After the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence to the four convicts in the case, she finally breathed a sigh of relief. "I really miss my daughter. No mother should go through this," she said.

On a night in 2009, when IT executive Jigisha Ghosh went missing, her mother Sabita grew anxious. Sabita's husband, who got information about the credit card transactions of their daughter, he tried to trace her, only to find her dead in Surajkund, Faridabad.

After two men were sentenced to death and another got life in jail, Sabita had to wait eight years to finally see justice being delivered. But Mother's Day saddens her as she remembers how Jigisha would wish her in the morning.

"She used to wish me in the morning and we would celebrate the entire day. She was a hardworking woman who had struggled a lot. She was quite successful in life. To this day I do not know why they murdered her after robbing her," said Sabita.

Sabita wants mothers across the country to fight for their daughters. "If a mother finds that her daughter is being discriminated against, then she should step in and fight for her. My daughter was my reason to live which is why I struggled for her all these years," she said.

No mother must see her children die, but that is exactly what Bilkis Bano witnessed when her two-year-old daughter was killed by a mob right in front of her during the 2002 Godhra riots.

Bano, who was five months pregnant at that time, was gang-raped by a mob, while 14 members of her family were killed in cold blood.

Fifteen years after the massacre, the Bombay High Court upheld the life imprisonment sentence of 11 accused in the case. Now a mother of four girls and a boy, Bano wants her daughters to grow up to become lawyers.

"I want my daughter's to get a good education and grow up in a safe India," Bano said.