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Punishment for Rape Victim : 42 years in coma, Punishment for Rapist: 7 years in Jail

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Punishment for Rape Victim : 42 years in coma, Punishment for Rapist: 7 years in Jail


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Mumbai:
Former King Edward Memorial Hospital nurse and rape survivor Aruna Shanbaug died on Monday morning. She was in coma for 42 years after she was brutally assaulted and raped by a hospital sweeper.

The 66-year-old was put on ventilator after she suffered a serious bout of pneumonia last week.
Aruna was in the medical ICU of the hospital located in Parel area of Mumbai.

Aruna was rushed out of the tiny room attached to ward number 4 that had been her home for four decades on Tuesday, after nurses attending to her saw she had difficulty in breathing. She was taken to the medical ICU and started on antibiotics.


KEM Hospital Dean Dr Avinash Supe said she was recently diagnosed with a pneumatic patch and put on ventilator support. Aruna was diagnosed with the lung infection after a series of diagnostic tests. She was fed through tubes.


Earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected a petition to allow mercy killing of Aruna. The court had, however, held that passive euthanasia is permissible under supervision of law in exceptional circumstances but active euthanasia is not permitted under the law.


Aruna was working as a nurse at Mumbai's KEM Hospital when on the night of November 27, 1973, Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, a ward boy at the hospital, attacked and sodomised her in the hospital basement.


The attack left her cortically blind, that means she could see, but her brain did not register the sight. The convicted ward boy was let off after seven years of imprisonment.


Mumbai nurse Aruna Shanbaug, in coma for 42 years after being raped by a hospital sweeper, dies - IBNLive


Sexual Abuse in a coma for 42 years: Mumbai nurse Aruna's tragic death! | ??????? ????????????? 42 ???????? ????: ?????? ????? ????? ?????? ?????! | VIKATAN
 
Her ordeal has ended: Aruna’s sister

Her ordeal has ended: Aruna’s sister

May 19, 2015

KARWAR: When Shyamala saw television channels showing photographs of her younger sister Aruna Shanbaug, who died on Monday, she felt a strange mixture of sadness and relief. "I am saddened by her death, but, at the same time, I am happy that her 42-year ordeal ended today," said the octogenarian who lives in Kodkani village in Kumta in north Karnataka. Aruna was in a vegetative state for more than four decades after she was brutally raped in 1973 by a sweeper at Mumbai's KEM Hospital where she worked as a staff nurse.

"She was very beautiful when she was young. She was intelligent and used to mix with people very easily," said Shyamala as she watched TV. Shyamala never went to see Aruna after the rape. "We had no means to support her or pay for her hospital expenses. Like me, my sister Shanta, who stayed in Mumbai, also abandoned Aruna due to financial constraints," she said. Shyamala recalled Aruna's last visit to their hometown of Haldipur in Uttara Kannada district just a couple of months before she was raped in November 1973. Today, none of the family lives in Haldipur. Most of her relatives live in Kodkani village. Shyamala lives alone as he daughters are married and her son lives and works in Bengaluru.

"After completing her SSLC, Aruna went to Mumbai in search of a job as the financial condition back home was bad," she said. Though she didn't know it, Aruna Shanbaug became the focus of debate about the right to euthanasia after writer Pinki Virani moved the court asking for mercy killing for the former nurse. The hospital opposed the petition and the court rejected it.

Davanagere woman seeks euthanasia Retired teacher from Davanagere H B Karibasamma, who lives in an old age home and suffers from multiple health problems, has been petitioning various authorities for the right to die. She approached the Karnataka high court with a petition to allow her to die with dignity on grounds of having to suffer alone for 14 years. She obtained signatures from 10,000 people to support her petition for euthanasia, and appealed to former President Abdul Kalam but nothing has come of it. The court rejected her petition and she has now petitioned the governor.


Her ordeal has ended: Aruna?s sister - The Times of India

 
Farewell, Aruna

Death finally came as a release to Aruna Shanbaug. But for others like her in similar situations, the fight for a dignified death goes on. After the brutal rape and strangulation that left her comatose, for more than four long decades Aruna was fed, bathed and dressed like an infant by her nursing colleagues in the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Mumbai, where she lay like a vegetable in an isolated room. Her state of suffering moved journalist and author Pinki Virani to move the Supreme Court in 2010 and, after a medical examination the court agreed she was in permanent vegetative state. Additionally, the next year the Supreme Court clarified that passive euthanasia was not illegal. Ironically, despite Aruna being the motivation behind the momentous ruling, Ms. Virani could not win the case and get passive euthanasia sanctioned for Aruna herself because the nurses who cared for her refused to let her go. Noble as they were in their unceasing attention to Aruna, their inability to allow her a dignified death was in many ways a greater misfortune. It was left to Ms. Virani to fight alone for the rights of “a body that is not alive but refuses to die”, as she described it in a documentary. The refusal to see that true compassion might lie in letting go of people who are terminally ill or brain-dead is fiercely fought by those who believe the right to live comes with the right to a dignified death.

Read more at: Farewell, Aruna - The Hindu
 
Aruna Shanbaug’s assailant is alive

Aruna Shanbaug’s assailant is alive

May 30, 2015


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For 42 years, says Sohan Lal Singh, son of Bharta Valmiki, life has been a penance. “I gave up non-vegetarian food, bad habits like smoking bidis and drinking. I had a daughter before I was sentenced, and she died while I was in jail. She died because I made a mistake. For many years after my release, I didn’t touch my wife. A son was born 14 years after I left jail.”

All this, because of the “haadsa” (incident) with “Aruna didiji”. “Mujhe bahut pachchtava hai. Main unse aur apne bhagwan se maafi maangna chahata hun (I have deep regret, I want to seek forgiveness from her and god).”

The “haadsa” Sohan Lal refers to took place the night of November 27, 1973 at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. A sweeper at the hospital, he brutally assaulted “didiji” Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse who remained in a vegetative state for 42 years, triggering a debate on euthanasia before her death on May 18 this year.


Sohan Lal spent 7 years at the Yerawada jail in Pune. And then disappeared. Some said he had moved to a Delhi hospital, other said he died of tuberculosis, still others said AIDS had got him.

But all these years, he lived in his ancestral home in Dadupur and then moved to his father-in-law’s house in Parpa, both villages in western Uttar Pradesh. He worked as a labour hand to make ends meet. Age has caught up with him — he says he is 66 but his son puts his age at 72 — but he continues to work for a labour contractor at a power plant 25 km away.

Wearing a rudraksha mala and carrying a photograph of his guru in his wallet, Sohan Lal says he learnt of Shanbaug’s death only after a journalist from the Sakal newspaper came looking for him earlier this week. The television in their two-room house was not working — the village was without electricity for a week — and the family does not read newspapers.

“I leave home at 6 am for work and return by 8 pm. I get Rs 261 a day. I have to cycle nearly 25 km to work. Where is the time to read newspapers?”

Sohan Lal lives with his wife, two sons, a daughter and three grandchildren. His sons also work as labour hands, earning Rs 200-300 a day. One of his two daughters is married and lives elsewhere. His wife has gone to Pune to attend a wedding in the family.

He rubbishes reports that he had returned to KEM Hospital after serving prison time.”My son told me newspapers wrote this. That I tried to kill her (Shanbaug)… I could barely sleep for 10 years after the incident. How was it possible for anyone to go back to the hospital after such a thing? I left Mumbai, why would I go back to the hospital to see her?”

He had also heard that people believed he had died of “a deadly disease.” “My son would tell us these things and my wife would cry. I wish I had died. My sons would have taken care of her. I am tired of the memories, I want to die now.”

Reluctant to discuss the KEM Hospital incident, he opens up after moving away from fellow workers and neighbours. “Everything happened in a fit of rage. There was a fight, it was dark, and I panicked. We both hit each other, I may have pulled the ornaments they said I stole during the scuffle. There was no rape… they beat me up in the police station and kept saying it was rape. I did not rape her, it must have been someone else,” he claimed. Later, he says he does not “remember anything” about the rape.
He spoke of a “troubled relationship” with Shanbaug who was with the animal experimentation unit at KEM Hospital. “Aruna didiji was always picking on me. She knew I was scared of dogs… there were other sweepers, but she picked me each time the dogs had to be fed or their cages swept. I told the doctor in charge and my supervisor to transfer me, I complained about her but no one listened. Who listens to a jamadar (sweeper)?”

He can’t recall the date of the incident that “destroyed everything.”

“That night I had gone to ask Aruna didiji for leave for a few days. My wife’s mother, who then lived in the house where I now live, was very ill. My wife wanted to visit her but Aruna didiji refused. She said if I took leave, she would complain about me in writing, saying I did no work, that I stole dog food, and still wanted leave,” he said.

“I had not done any such thing. I was scared of dogs, so how could I steal their food?… I had seen Aruna didiji playing cards with ward boys and other nurses during duty hours. When she threatened to complain and not give me leave, I told her I would tell her supervisor about her. After that, there was an argument and a physical fight. I don’t know what I did in rage,” he said.

Eldest son Kishan says that four years ago, he told his father about the rejection of the euthanasia plea on behalf of Shanbaug. “My father prays twice a day, but that day after I told him, he prayed five-six times. I told him what the papers said, that her family was gone, that she had been living in the hospital. He was agitated and began trembling. When the Supreme Court rejected the plea, he became stable again.”

“He does not talk about the case, and we don’t feel comfortable asking him. In our culture, you cannot ask a father what he did to a woman. But my uncles have told me so many times how he destroyed our lives. We could have lived in Mumbai…”

Younger son Ravindra says his mother told him about the case when he was 12. “She told me I should forgive my father, that the papers were exaggerating his crime. She said my brother was angry with my father but I should love him because he had made a mistake. But he never even sent me to school. I cannot even write my name, how do I forgive him?”

Aruna Shanbaug?s assailant is alive; tired of memories, I want to die, he says | The Indian Express | Page 99
 
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