Aruna’s story

The alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl at Tata Memorial Hospital, takes us back to a similar case which shook the nation in 1973. Twenty-five-year-old Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at KEM Hospital, was raped and assaulted by a subordinate on November 27 of that year. Aruna was to get married soon.

It had been proved that the accused, Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, resented being pulled up for his misdemeanors and being ordered about by Aruna, and thus motivated, committed the heinous act. He choked her with a dog chain before raping and robbing her as she was preparing to leave after her shift. And Aruna was left was left speechless — quite literally. The ‘muscle in her mouth’, with which she verbally flayed her subordinate, no longer receives signals from her brain.

When Walmiki choked her, oxygen supply to parts of her brain was cut off and she could no longer speak. She also became cortically blind, lost the use of her limbs, muscle control and suffered a kind of emotional disability, which is manifested in bouts of inappropriate laughter or screaming. Her memory and most of her other mental faculties were also gone. Now Aruna exists in a kind of semi-conscious limbo, and is solicitously looked after by nurses and doctors at KEM Hospital. She is permanently bed-ridden, curled up in an awkward foetal position.

The rapist was convicted for seven years in jail, and is believed to have started a new life in another hospital in New Delhi.

Touched by the horrific case, a Mumbai-based journalist, Pinki Virani, wrote a book, titled Aruna’s Life, which is a step-by-step description of the horrific event. It not only casts perceptive light on the motive but sensitively refrains from injuring the victim any more by this retelling. The book was published in 1998 in four different languages — English, Hindi, Marathi and Kannada.  

— Shweta Shertukde