Rape victim recovers, is normal child

As the minor victim of rape who was assaulted in a suburban train on August 14 recovers gradually at the JJ Hospital, several new facts are coming to light, indicating that she is neither deaf nor mute, but is quite normal though from an extremely poor and illiterate background.

She is neither an orphan, beggar or street child but just a kid with a family living in Ambernath, near Mumbai.

"She was unable to give her address but was ready to lead us to her home where her mother and two brothers live since she is very eager leave the hospital," Nirmala Sawant Prabhavalkar, chairperson of the State Women's Commission, told Gulf News.

She visited her this afternoon at the hospital where the curious media and even other social workers have been kept away and even her name, address and other details are being withheld.

According to Prabhavalkar, the rape victim is around 12 or 13 though recent newspaper reports indicated her age as 17 years.

"She is also unable to say how she landed in the train at that unearthly hour. She smiled at me and I found her to be quite innocent as she has not understood what really happened to her except that it was some kind of physical assault."

The doctors and psychiatrists attending on her have not directly approached her with questions and it is likely that she will not be taken back to the Children's Remand Home in Dongri where there is no place for her.

Her mannerism, unlike the eating patterns of beggars, is disciplined, she says. "She also had a fair knowledge of numbers and knew a cellular phone when she saw mine." The minor could be discharged from the hospital in a week's time before being taken home.

The sexual assault on this girl by a 22-year-old labourer, Salim Khan, from Kolkata in the presence of five or six men in a suburban train between Malad and Borivli railway stations stunned the city.

Even as newspapers in various languages have condemned the behaviour of the passengers as sheer cowardliness, there are also articles on how any one would have reacted in such a terrible moment and what could be done to save a victim.

What is worse is that one of the passengers was a journalist from a national daily. His report not just shocked the city but has triggered a debate on the effects of a stress-ridden and selfish urban lifestyle.