Delhi: Mental scars are too deep for minor victim

The five-year-old girl, victim of a brutal sexual assault near her house in East Delhi, is still not fit enough to be discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Rhythma Kaul reports.

The five-year-old girl, victim of a brutal sexual assault near her house in East Delhi, is still not fit enough to be discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

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Though the wounds on her body have been healing with time and medication, trauma of the bestiality inflicted upon her had forced the already quiet girl to withdraw deeper inside her shell.

Her neighbour and one of his friends abducted her on the evening of April 14 and kept her in captivity for 72 hours in a deserted room without food or water before she was rescued.

“She hardly ever stepped out of home, she usually stayed indoors and kept to herself,” said her father, who works as a daily wager in east Delhi’s Gandhinagar. Her mother is a homemaker, who stayed home with her daughter and a two-year-old son.

“She was brought to us starved, bleeding and severely traumatised,” said RN Bansal, medical superintendent of Swami Dayanand Hospital, where she was taken in the early hours of April 17.

She had cuts and bruises on her neck and an infection so severe that it took a very strong dose of antibiotics to bring down the fever. More shocking was the ultrasound result, which showed presence of foreign objects inside her lower abdomen.

“In an hour-long surgery, surgeons took out three pieces of candles and a 200ml plastic hair-oil bottle from inside her on April 18,” said Dr Bansal. “The objects were possibly inserted into her vagina and triggered the infection inside the abdomen,” he added.

She was shifted to AIIMS on April 19. “If she continues to improve like this, she should be fit to be discharged in a week. She would require a few reconstructive surgeries but that could be performed later,” said a senior doctor at AIIMS.Watching the shrunken little child in her hospital bed, her father remains distraught.

“Usually children keep playing around the house, so they must have waited for a quiet moment and abducted her,” he said.