Hyderabad, April 11: For most people, New Year’s Eve is filled with cheer and joyous anticipation.
But for Devender and Latha, this is precisely when their memories assume the darkest shades of grief.
Around this time of year in 2008, their daughter Swapnika and her friend, Praneetha — both engineering students, were attacked by a crazed stalker, Srinivas.
Praneetha survived with grievous burns, but Swapnika breathed her last after days of agony in hospital.
Since the day she died, life has come to a standstill for her parents.
“We live in the past,’’ Latha told Express.
“Not a day passes without something to remind us of her. Nothing can bring solace to our family.’’ Acid-attacks by spurned Romeos seem to be phenomena peculiar to India. Not a month passes without a young girl being scarred or killed by a man’s corrosive attentions, the latest being the case of R Lalitha who fell victim to a hotel worker’s jealousy.
As for the families, the acid etched deep wounds in their psyches.
Devender and Latha tried to ease their pain by moving to Hyderabad last year. “Warangal is my native place, but I can’t bear to go back there,’’ says Devender.
As for Lalitha, she relives the agony of 31 December 2008 every day.
Filled with all sorts of fears, she refuses to pick up telephone calls from unknown numbers — and even to be photographed. A knock on the door gives her the jitters…
Swapnika had sustained 70 per cent burns but her fighting spirit kept their hopes high, almost to the end.
Their fog of pain is, however, lifted from time to time by the knowledge that their daughter’s friend has recovered and is doing well.
“We haven’t been in touch with Praneetha but her father called us sometime back and told us she was well. Yes, there’s sadness when we see her on the TV sometimes. She she used to be so much a member of our family. Swapnika and Praneetha used to be inseparable,’’ says Latha. Acid scars permanently but the government’s promises tend to evaporate a few weeks after the story disappears from the mass media.
When Swapnika’s trauma was headline news on the TV channels, the State Government rushed to announce financial help to the stricken families. Not a rupee has reached them yet. Later that year, Devender met Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and received a promise of help. But 15 days later, the chief minister met his end in a helicopter crash. The family then turned to Ponnala Lakshmaiah, a Warangal native, but nothing has come of it either. “I have lost hope,’’ says Devender, an ex-serviceman.
Devender and Latha live in straitened circumstances in a three-room portion in AG Colony near ESI Hospital at Sanathnagar. Swapnika, in her final year of BTech and on the way to a decent job, was their big hope. The bereaved parents speak with muted sadness but when stalkers hit the headlines again they are besides themselves with rage. “If the government were really concerned, would such attacks on girls continue?’’ asks Devender.
He bluntly says that Lalitha’s assailant must be “encountered’’, just as the murderers of Swapnika were.
-Agencies