Aruna Shanbaug's attacker: Slapped her in fit of rage, didn't rape, sodomise

Sohanlal Valmiki – who disappeared after serving a seven-year jail term for assaulting nurse Aruna Shanbaug – claimed that he had neither raped the nurse, nor had he strangled her with a dog chain. Valmiki, in his late sixties, said he had just slapped the nurse hard, following which she fell down and fainted. Speaking to Hindustan Times, nearly 30 km away from his village, Parpa, Valmiki said Shanbaug used to repeatedly hurl casteist comments at him, infuriating him gravely on the day of the assault. Shanbaug was a staff nurse at the KEM Hospital when she was attacked by sweeper Valmiki on the evening of November 27, 1973. After the brutal attack, she lived in a vegetative state for 42 years till her death on May 18.