“Aap so jao, main bhi ab soungi”, (You sleep, I’ll also go to sleep) were the 23-year-old gangrape victim’s last words, as she spoke in a feeble voice to her father, a drop of tear fell from her eye, and she went to deep slumber on Dec 26 from which she never woke up.
Delhi tabloid Mail Today’s reporter spoke to the victim’s father, who said, the victim never woke up from her sleep in Delhi’s Safdarjang Hospital on Dec 26, a day after Christmas.
“She last spoke to me on Wednesday at 9.30 pm. I went to see her in the Intensive Care Unit ( ICU) in Safdarjung Hospital.
“She asked me if I had taken my dinner. I answered yes. “She then told me that I should sleep. She said, ‘ aap so jao, main bhi ab soungi’ ( you go to sleep, I will also sleep).
“Then she embraced my hand and slept as a tear dropped from the corner of her eye. Those were her last words to me.
“Thereafter, she never gained consciousness and didn’t talk to any of us,” said her father.
Says the father: “ She always wanted to support her family. She knew that I worked hard to earn money and my sons are too young to earn.
“She worked in a call centre in Dehradun after her college hours to earn. She gave her fees for two consecutive years in her college earning from the call centre. She bought us many gifts and things for the household.”
“She used to sleep for four to five hours only. Rest of the time she studied or worked. She was very intelligent. She did her schooling from Janakpuri and topped in her class.
“She was very stubborn about books, no matter how costly those were. I always fulfilled her demands because they were always genuine,” he said.
Her father, a daily-wage loader at the Indira Gandhi international airport, struggles to make ends meet.
He has worked double shifts, sacrificing sleep at the age of 55 to earn some extra money to pay for his daughter’s fees studying in a different state.
——Courtesy: India Tv