Choti Nirbhaya, the four-year-old Keshav Puram rape survivor was discharged from Safdarjung hospital on the 7th of November. Amidst all the unimaginable trauma – including not being able to defecate and urinate through the natural process (she underwent a colostomy) – the child is gradually starting to inch back towards normal life.
The family has only received Rs. 25,000 from the Nirbhaya Fund. Today is the last day of The Quint’s campaign to gather support for the child with the help of the crowd funding platform, BitGiving. You can help her by donating your bit.
After spending almost a month in a hospital, she finds it difficult to stay in bed. All she wants to do is to play with her five-year-old sister – who, incidentally, has stopped going to school after the fateful incident. “She is too scared to step out of the house without me,” tells her mother.
But the younger one (Choti Nirbhaya) is stronger. She is not scared of anything, even after all the trauma she has gone through. My brave child came crawling, covered in blood, all the way across the railway line. She told us about the culprit and identified him.Choti Nirbhaya’s Mother
“I want her to study well, so that she can become something and live a good life. At this young age, she has already been through the worst that she could,” her mother says.
A Day After Hospital, Choti Nirbhaya in Court
The child was taken to Rohini district court the day after she was discharged from the hospital, to give her statement on the case in front of the district court magistrate. Statements of her grandparents have already been recorded in front of the judge.
For a tiny rape survivor who was only discharged from hospital yesterday, was it not an ordeal to appear before a court the very next day? Her grandfather concurs: “Yes it is difficult for all of us. But, this is the process. The police and the judiciary are helping us, why shouldn’t we do the same,” the old man says.
A lot of people approached us initially – people from the media, people from the Delhi Commission for Women, people from the Aam Admi Party – but, nobody has really helped us. They made promises and forgot them all.
– Choti Nirbhaya’s Grandfather
The little one’s medical condition is stable now. But she will be on medication for the next few months – till the perineal tear that she is suffering repairs. She has been asked to visit paediatric surgery OPD and plastic surgery OPD on November 18, 2015.
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