“Mother, please save me from them. They are spitting on me, hurling abuses and beating me. They want me to do bad things…” The screams for help of the 13-year-old Dalit girl reverberated in a room of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences where she woke up in the early hours of Monday, and minutes before she attempted suicide by consuming a cocktail of drugs for the second time in the past few days. The victim was kidnapped and raped by eight persons a month ago.
In psychitaric ward
The girl, who is suspected to be suffering from acute depression, was shifted to the psychiatric ward around 3.30 p.m.
“My daughter wept incessantly and even refused to eat after a nurse told her that mentally sick patients are kept there. My daughter is depressed, not mentally unsound,” said her mother.
Recounting what transpired, the mother said: “I fell asleep around midnight after ensuring that my daughter had gone to bed. She was suddenly woken up by a nightmare…. her rapists beating her mercilessly. They were threatening her with dire consequences if she did not yield to their demands.”
Still to recover from the nightmare, around 2 a.m. the girl found some tablets lying nearby and swallowed all of them in one go.
Her condition deteriorated and she collapsed in the toilet.
She was lifted back to her bed and doctors were called in. A tube was put into her for stomach-wash,” said another woman assisting the victim’s mother.
Recurring nightmares
The mother said the girl was constantly having nightmares.
“Her counsellor, who has been able to win her trust and confidence during long conversations with her at the Hedgewar Hospital where she was admitted earlier, has convinced her that all those involved in the case have been arrested and that she need not be scared of them anymore, but she loses control whenever she has a nightmare,” she said.
The victim’s family complained that no one other than her immediate family members was being allowed to see her.
Counsellor kept away
“The lady counsellor came to AIIMS twice but was not allowed in,” said the girl’s mother. On April 20, the girl consumed sedatives, a day after she allegedly called up the Police Control Room seeking details of the developments in her case. She was then taken the Recurroingo Hedgewar Hospital from where she was shifted to AIIMS a few days later.
The victim was kidnapped along with her brother on March 15 and taken to Loni in Uttar Pradesh where she was raped in front of him.
While he was released a day later, the victim was gang-raped for nearly a week before she escaped from a house in Baghpat and reached home.
