“What can you ask me now, the story is over,” says Sohanlal Bhartha Valmiki in an interview with Sakaal Times. What is extraordinary about this sentence is that it was uttered by Aruna Shanbaug’s alleged rapist after her death. A pretty casual and cavalier attitude towards the woman whose life he ruined by raping her and strangling her, thus rendering her in a coma for 40 years.
Flashback to forty years ago when a pretty young nurse was strangled with a dog chain and sodomised by a ward boy with whom she once had a minor tiff. The ward boy got off with charges of assault and a light seven year sentence. Aruna, on the other hand, got a stiffer sentence – forty years in coma. Brain dead she lay in a room in the same hospital where she had once worked, until her demise recently.
Aruna had a promising career. She was even engaged to a doctor in the hospital where she worked. This episode snatched away her entire life from her, rendering her to a pathetic vegetative state. So when Sohanlal Bhartha says ‘What can you ask me now, the story is over’, that statement is nothing short of appalling. What is more, Valmiki said he cannot recall anything about what had happened on that day. However, he asked the journalist, “Why are you people calling it as rape?” How very convenient for him!
He added further, ‘I just slapped her in a fit of rage, did not rape or sodomise.’
It’s evident that Valmiki has tried to move on from that ‘episode’ in his life, although he still shows no remorse. But Valmiki is the accused here and not the victim. Besides, he was never tried for rape, only for assault and attempted murder. His victim, Aruna Shanbaug, stuck in a hospital bed all her life, never got the chance to move on.
The fact that forty years ago the law chose not to press charges of rape on him, makes it even more convenient for Valmiki to deny any accusations of rape today. Valmiki today, only admits to assault, not rape.
It’s a combination of several circumstances that denied Aruna Shanbaug the justice that she deserved. Those circumstances primarily being an incredibly backward definition of rape and key players who decided to play god and withhold evidence.
For starters, since she was on her period, she was raped anally, not vaginally. The medical examination of Aruna Shanbaug, when she was found the morning after her assault on November 27, 1973, was done with the ‘finger test’ (Fingers inserted into vagina to check virginity). Her virginity was found intact which led them to conclude that she was not raped. Sodomy was not factored in forty years ago by the law.
Aruna was engaged to a junior doctor at the hospital. The dean of KEM hospital at that time chose not to report the anal rape to the police to spare him ’embarrassment’ through public disclosure. Aruna’s fiancé was also discouraged from being a complainant. Instead, a sub-inspector became the complainant because no one else was willing.
And today, when the police is mulling over whether they should re-open Aruna’s case and press charges of rape against Valmiki, the accused has taken aid of his earlier trial to emphasise that he didn’t rape her. He only assaulted her…with a dog chain.
Is the story over? I should think not. Not until Aruna Shanbaug gets the justice she deserves. Except that 40 years after the actual episode itself, how will the police be able to gather any evidence whatsoever? Any previous charge sheets and evidence details are sketchy at best. Any forensic evidence or eye witnesses connected with the incident would have been long gone. In fact, the charge sheets and trial records don’t even have a picture of Sohanlal Bhartha. All this is based on whether a judge would even allow the case to be reopened.
The police claim that they have been searching for Bhartha for years. Yet all it took was for one inquisitive reporter to find the name of his native place as listed in the records and search him out in less than a month. And we have an accused who is clearly just wary of the law, and not showing actual remorse yet. He is only sorry that he has been reduced to this state. No regrets for what Aruna went through. And he plays smart too by denying rape and sticking to what he was charged with.
Will Aruna get the justice that was denied to her all her life? It still looks unlikely. Is the story over? If the law fails to prosecute him appropriately a second time, then yes, this time, it will surely be over.
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