After the injury, came the insult. And destitute as she is, the Park Street rape victim is finding it impossible to let Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar’s derogatory statement pass, even if it means another legal tussle.

On December 28, the MP had just stopped short of calling her a sex worker. “It was not a rape case. It was a misunderstanding between a lady and her client,” Ghosh Dastidar had said.

Her comments, made hours before the Delhi gangrape victim had died, had drawn nationwide criticism. But though no one has to come to her aid, the Park Street victim is determined to file a defamation suit against the MP. “She has insulted not only me but every woman in Bengal. My family and I are passing through hell. Her remarks just added to the angst,” she said.

After she was raped in February 2011, the woman had lost her job. “I don’t have enough money to buy food,” she said. But this insult is too much to bear. “I am trying to get a lawyer who will not be too expensive.”