Every time Aruna Shanbaug made it to the headlines, the coldest of hearts felt a tug and deep remorse.
Imagine spending your life like a vegetable, for 42 years.
The story of Aruna is an exceptional one. She was a former KEM hospital nurse, who suffered a brutal sexual assault at the hands of a sweeper.
At 9:40 am today, God finally decided to put an end to her torture. She had been fighting pneumonia for the last six days. She had been earlier taken to the MICU unit of the Parel hospital after she had trouble breathing.
The nurses at the hospital were engulfed in a blanket of gloom, after having stood by her day and night for the last 40 years. They had been hoping that being the fighter that she was, they would get a chance to celebrate her 68th birthday in the first week of June.
Aruna had been in a room outside ward 4, since 1973. Can you even imagine for a second that while the world moved on from landlines to satellite phones, from aol.com to Facebook, a lady spent her whole life on a bead waiting to die?
For a simple sick reason that a man fancied her and could not take a no for an answer. Sohanlal Bhartha was the man who blew out this young woman’s any chance to having a normal, good life.
In the past the hospital nurses also fought vehemently for her right to live after a plea for euthanasia was filed in the Supreme Court.
At Khurki, we hope and pray and finally her soul rests in peace and may God never write this horrible fate for anybody else’s daughter.
