Story of Aruna Shanbaug

One of the best days as a Law student is when you are taught the subject- “Rape”.

The class attendance is the highest that day. After all, we get to discuss about our favourite subject 's@x'. The last benches get filled up first like balcony seats in the cinema. Some prefer dress circle though.

We’d get a sneak peek into someone’s sexual fantasies, we, the students imagined. 

And I must share here. The date went horrible.  

My relationship with Aruna Shanbaug started that day. Her case was one of our case studies. Her story is so painful that one wishes that it was fictional.

Shanbaug was a nurse in a hospital in Mumbai. In November 1973, when she was 24, she caught Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, a sweeper in the hospital doing some embezzlement and threatened to bring it to the notice of the hospital authorities.

In order to take revenge, Sohanlal attacked her while she was changing clothes in the hospital basement. He choked her with a dog chain and sodomized her. The asphyxiation cut off oxygen to her brain, resulting in brain stem contusion injury and cervical cord injury, apart from leaving her cortically blind. She was discovered the next morning in a pool of blood, with her belongings stolen. She was to get married next month to a doctor. The witnesses said that iron rods were used to molest her.

The police case was registered as a case of robbery and attempted murder ONLY. (Neither for rape or sexual molestation, nor for the ‘unnatural sexual offence’).

Sohanlal was caught and convicted for 7 years’ sentences for assault and robbery. After which, he has been a free man. 

Journalist and human-rights activist Pinki Virani has since tried to track down Sohanlal; she was led to believe that he had changed his name after leaving prison but continues to work in a Delhi hospital. Since neither the Hospital nor the Court that tried Sohanlal kept a file photo of him, Virani's search has so far failed.

(Source- Wikipedia)

Well, this wasn’t all for her. She was brain dead and remained in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS) for in the hospital until her death today setting a record of being the hospital for 42 years. She died today at 66.

She didn’t just become a subject of study (read mockery) at Law because of what happened to her and the way she lived her life, her life was made to set another example for us in another case- ‘euthanasia' i.e. mercy killing. 

In 2010, Pinki Virani filed a petition for euthanasia for Aruna Shanbaug. The Supreme Court praised Ms Virani’s concern, but ruled that her relationship with the patient does not give her right to petition on Ms Shanbaug’s behalf for a mercy killing. The only party that can appeal for euthanasia for Ms. Shanbaug was the staff of KEM Hospital which has nursed her since 1973. 

Her case is a landmark case for so many judgments, so many societal implications, a case of such pity where you don’t cry in tears from eyes but bleed from the heart.  

Shanbaug's story rips me apart, like... I feel naked with my skin peeled off.  

Why is reality so stark, and we so helpless.