The eight-year-old girl does not know that the two men who raped her and left to die in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur have been sentenced to death, her father said.
Irfan and Asif, both in their twenties, raped the girl on June 26 in a secluded place in Mandsaur, slit her throat and left for dead, in an incident that had sparked outrage across the state. The girl is recuperating in a hospital in Indore.
They were declared guilty and awarded the death penalty by a special court on Tuesday under the newly introduced section 376DB (punishment for rape of a girl under 12 years of age by one or more persons) of the Indian Penal Code.
“For the past two months that single incident turned our world upside down, but we never discuss the issue before her and she too never refers to it,” the father, who has expressed his satisfaction over the verdict, said.
“Even after the verdict yesterday, we did not tell her anything. Her only interaction has been when she identified the two accused and recorded her statement in the court,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“Even after the verdict yesterday, we did not tell her anything. Her only interaction has been when she identified the two accused and recorded her statement in the court,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}But that has not helped her get over the mental and physical trauma even after two months. She was found with injury marks on her body, throat and private parts and has undergone several surgeries.
“She still wakes up during nights ... screaming and shouting and we have to soothe her before she can go back to sleep,” the father, who is living with her in the hospital along with her mother, said.
“She still has blurred vision from her injured right eye and suffers from terrible pain on the left side of her head. Eight days back she had an operation so that she could pass urine normally, and she is recovering,” he said.
“The doctors told us that they will have to operate again, but that would be done sometime in the winters as she is very weak now.”
The accused had also injured her eye and her private parts, and she is yet to recover from these injuries.
But like any other eight-year-old, she loves to watch cartoons on the television, play with toys and sometimes laugh and throws tantrums as well, said her father.
One of the doctors treating the girl said it will take a few months for her to recover from the physical wounds, but the mental trauma might continue for years, especially during her teens, and she would need constant counselling.