As soon as you enter the 250-square-foot room on the ground floor of ward number 4 of KEM Hospital, a notice on the board greets you saying, “This is Aruna Shanbaug’s room’. Indeed, a semi-comatose, cortically blind Aruna spent 42 years of her tragic life, bed-ridden in this room, after she was inhumanly raped and violated by a former KEM ward boy. Finally, on May 18 this year, she succumbed to her untold suffering. The room became a poignant reminder of her struggle and similar hardships that many other rape victims like her might have endured.
As a mark of respect, the state government, in September this year, announced that the room would be made part of a 1,000 square foot open crisis centre. However, when The Asian Age paid a visit to the ward just the other day, we found that nothing had moved since the announcement.
