The Central Industrial Security Force has told the Mumbai Police that Sohanlal Valmiki, assailant of Aruna Shanbaug, will no longer be working at the Dadri plant of National Thermal Power Corporation, where he was employed as a contract labourer.
Ms. Shanbaug, a former nurse at KEM who was in a vegetative state for the past 42 years after she was brutally assaulted and allegedly raped by Mr. Valmiki, died last month of pneumonia.
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The CISF conveyed its decision in a letter that the Mumbai Police received on Monday, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Atul Kulkarni confirmed. CISF is responsible for securing the premises of all the units under NTPC. It has also cancelled Mr. Valmiki’s gate pass, which is mandatory for all workers to get an access to the plant
Meanwhile, even as Mr. Valmiki faces the threat of social ostracisation in his native village in Uttar Pradesh, there was a strong pitch for a fresh murder case against him on Monday.
The demand for a fresh FIR booking him for rape and murder was made during the launch of a Marathi biography on Ms. Shanbaug’s life, Vyatha Arunachi (Aruna’s Agony), penned by Mumbai journalist Neha Purav. Among the prominent personalities who pitched for a fresh FIR were T.P Lahane, Dean of Sir JJ Group of Hospital, Mumbai’s largest public hospital, and former Mayor Shraddha Jadhav.
The Mumbai Police has maintained that it would seek legal opinion on whether to file a fresh murder case against Mr. Valmiki, even as legal experts have opined that such an exercise would be pointless. They have cited the delay and the doctrine of double jeopardy as reasons why Mr. Valmiki cannot be prosecuted for Ms. Shanbaug’s death, four decades after the crime. Human Rights lawyer Vijay Hiremath said “It would set a wrong precedent.”
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