Three days after a 23-year old woman was assaulted and gangraped in a moving bus in Indian capital, she continues to fight for life in Safdarjung Hospital, Indian media reported on Wednesday.
According to NDTV report, vital organs of the girl are permanently damaged. She is on a ventilator in the hospital’s ICU and is getting a regular infusion of morphine to control the pain, doctors treating her claim that the pain is so excruciating that despite the morphine dose she is conscious.
But the victim, despite her critical injuries, is putting up a good fight.
The victim had received severe genital and abdominal injuries and lost a lot of blood during the assault. Doctors claimed that they had never seen such brutal assault.
“Her condition is critical but she is conscious and communicating by writing notes. She is a spirited girl and is showing tremendous will to fight her condition,” said Dr BD Athani, Medical Superintendent, Safdarjung Hospital.
To boost her spirits further, the hospital authorities had even considered the idea of showing her television so that she realised action was being taken against the culprits.
“We did think of it initially but then decided against it as it would have meant moving her from her bed,” said a doctor in the hospital. Her parents are anxiously waiting outside the ICU, but doctors have not allowed the father to meet her and even the mother has met only twice to avoid infection.
The condition of the girl had marginally improved on Tuesday morning, and she had even started communicating with the doctors by writing small chits. ‘Lift my leg’, ‘pain in my right leg’, ‘clean my throat, it’s burning,’ and ‘have they been caught’ were some of the notes written by her through the morning.
However, later during the second assessment, doctors found her condition had deteriorated.
“She needed more ventilatory support, her pulse rate is high at 130 (normal is between 70 and 80), her platelets have dropped to 48,000 (normal is between 1.4- 4 lakh) and her blood pressure has also dropped considerably, which indicates developing of the infection,” said Dr Athani.
Doctors may perform another life-saving surgery on her to remove dead tissues, if required. “The surgery we performed on her was absolutely necessary to save her life and if need be, we may perform another one in coming days,” said a surgeon.
“We are performing life-saving measures right now, and reconstruction surgeries will be performed after she has survived the life-threat,” he added.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday visited Safdarjung Hospital to inquire about the condition of the victim and later wrote letters to chief minister Sheila Dikahit and home minister Sushilkumar Shinde asking them to take urgent action to improve security of “daughters, sisters and mothers”.
Four out of six accused were arrested and sent to police custody for five day on Tuesday. Two are still missing and the police are reportedlt searching for them in rajasthan and Bihar.
The police have added three more sections of Indian Penal Code against the accused.
The accused had decided to “punish” her for trying to stop them from attacking her male friend who was accompanying her, police sources said.
The men, including the bus driver Ram Singh, had taken out the bus for a joy ride on Sunday evening. They spotted the student and her friend at the Munirka bus stop in south Delhi and called out to them saying the bus was headed to Dwarka, where the woman lives.
The six men were apparently so confident they will not be caught that the assailants carried on with their routine chores the next day while one brought back the vehicle to his house.
But luck ran out for the men within 24 hours as police, who were aided by the description provided by the victims about the vehicle, zeroed in on them and even arresting one from Rajasthan where he was in hiding.
Just before raping the 23-year-old para-medical student in a moving bus on Sunday night and beating her male friend who tried to protect her, the gang of six men, two of them still absconding, looted a carpenter by providing him a lift in the bus.
Police investigators discovered that Singh has criminal records: He is wanted in an accident case. Plus, sources said, his elder brother, Suresh, was jailed after being convicted in a rape case six months ago.
Delhi gangrape: Victim’s condition still critical, main accused remorseless
