- The servant boy, a minor, engaged in a middle class family dies mysteriously locked in a kitchen.
- The servant boy, a minor, engaged in a middle class family dies mysteriously locked in a kitchen. Police inquiries reveal he was sleeping in the kitchen near a burning coal oven to keep himself warm in winder. Post-mortem report confirms death by carbon-monoxide gas poisoning. The happy household is suddenly thrown into a psychological trauma. Torn between a sense of guilt and fear of a police case and consequently scandal, the young employer and his wife expose their petty, hypocritical selves. Fearing accusation from the father of the deceased, they make futile attempts to please him. That nothing happens to them and the father departs quietly, leaves them completely defeated and crushed.—Swarup Basak
- Kharij opens with a sequence where a small child comes to work in the household of a middle-class family. The couple are both working, and have a small lovable child. A few sequences later, the scene of action moves to the kitchen. The kitchen is locked from inside. The previous night, the servant had gone to sleep in the kitchen ( usually he sleeps in the basement of the house) and is not answering the frantic calls of his master and other members of the household. After trying for quite a while, the door is broken and the boy is found to be lying in an unconscious state. The doctor is called, who announces the child to be dead. As it is a case of unnatural death, the police is called. By now, inquisitive neighbors have already got wind of the incident, and have converged as a crowd in front of the couple's residence. Some sympathetic neighbors comes to help the couple in this crisis. Police arrives and takes stock of the situation. They conduct their routine investigations, and takes the body of the boy for "postmortem." The husband will have to report to Police Station in the evenings. A helpful neighbor, sensing it to be a complicated case, advises the husband to consult a reputed lawyer to prevent him from getting implicated in legal wrangling. When the husband goes to the lawyer, the lawyer exposes the husband's false claims of treating the servant-boy as one of their family members.
When the deceased boy's father comes to the couple's house to take his son's monthly salary, he receives the shattering news of his son's demise from the other small boy working in the household. When the couple actually goes to meet the servant's father, the man breaks down and naturally, is inconsolable. Some of the sequences are indeed very touching. When the deceased boy's father has to stay that night in the couple's house, the couple sets up a nice bed for him at night, full of warm quilt and thick mattresses. However, the boy's father's sentiments prevented him from availing of such luxury, and he said that he would like to sleep in the kitchen where his son was found dead sleeping.
Post-mortem gives verdict that the boy has died from carbon-monoxide formation. The boy had gone to a late night film show the previous night, and returned around midnight to the house. When he felt that it was cold, he went to sleep in the kitchen (normally he slept in the basement). There was no ventilation in the kitchen room, and the charcoal cooking item was dimly burning. Ignorant of the perils of sleeping without proper ventilation, the servant succumbs in his sleep. After the postmortem report, the boy is taken to the burning Ghat and set aflame.
The denouement sees the hapless father finally asking permission from the couple to return to his home in the village.
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