‘Nirbhaya’ Dies, Mother Alleges Another Daughter Threatened
NEW DELHI: A 14-year-old Dalit girl in Delhi, who had been on life support for over a month after she was raped repeatedly and then forced to drink acid, died on Sunday, becoming another echo of “Nirbhaya”, the young student who was fatally gang-raped in 2012.
In a dying statement from the hospital bed as she vomited blood, the teen said she was beaten up, raped “several times a day” and forced to drink acid mixed in juice. Her hands and feet were tied up and she was denied food, she alleged.”The man threatened to stab her with a knife… she was scared…Now her attacker is threatening my son, he has not gone to school for 10 days,” her mother told today.
The girl was first sexually assaulted in December; the accused Shivshankar, who is from her neighourhood, was arrested but let off on bail.The teenager, whose parents are hospital sweepers, was kidnapped again in May from her home, allegedly by the accused, just before a court hearing on her rape case. “We looked for her for 12 days. When my child came back home, she had bruises all over. She was vomiting blood. Her mouth, chest and limbs had been blackened,” said the teen’s mother.
She says the accused man’s family has now threatened to kidnap her son.”They told her if she revealed anything in court, they would kill her father and mother,” the mother sobbed.The police have claimed that the girl kept changing her statements and denying rape. “A medical board will investigate her case,” said a police source.
Accusing the police of not arresting the accused or protecting the girl, Swati Maliwal, the chief of the women’s panel, tweeted yesterday: “How many Nirbhayas does Delhi want?”She claimed that Centre-Delhi politics and poor policing had left the girl vulnerable to not one, but multiple attacks.The women’s panel chief has backed the girl’s family’s allegation that she was forced to withdraw her charges. “I don’t deny that she changed and withdrew her statement several times before the court and the police. It’s a matter worth investigating,” said Ms Maliwal.
