This is the true story of a pretty, ambitious and sprightly small town girl, Aruna Shanbaug who left home when she was 18 and headed for the big city Mumbai,India,to pursue her dream of becoming a nurse. She completed her nursing course and landed a job in the King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, as a staff nurse. In course of time she fell in love with a young doctor over there , got engaged to him and had even set the wedding date!

Aruna ,at 23, whose dreams were about to come true, went about her work with stars in her eyes and a lilt in her heart. Though she was good natured and righteous ,she was also a strict disciplinarian with a strong tongue to her subordinates. Unfortunately,this was her undoing as she found a fatal enemy in a ward boy, Sohanlal ,who intensely resented at being pulled up for his misdemeanors and being dictated by her.

On that fateful Nov 27^th 1973 evening,between 5-6pm after her shift,she went down to the basement of the building where the dog research lab was situated to change her uniform.(This in spite of the matron's orders not to use the basement,most nurses used it because the nurses' room was a few floors away).Her enemy,Sohanlal,who had vowed revenge,stalked her,choked her with a dog chain before brutally raping and robbing her .Then he left her for dead. Aruna lay undetected in the hospital basement till the early hours of the next morning when the morning shift started.

To everyone's horror,doctors discovered that when Sohanlal axphysated her,with the dog chain round her neck, the blood and oxygen supply to parts of her brain had been cut off and she was bereft of the power of speech and expression. She had also became cortically blind, lost the ability to control her muscles , use her limbs and worse, lost her memory .

In other words, clinically Aruna had become brain dead! She has existed thus,in this twilight zone, brain dead for sight, speech and movement for 35 years .Last year,on June 1 ,2008 she turned 60!

She just survives in a kind of semi-comatose oblivion ,permanently bed-ridden, curled up in the foetal position and looked after by the successive batches of nurses,doctors and the administration of the KEM Hospital where she had worked as staff nurse over 35 years ago.

Her tormentor was convicted for only seven years of imprisonment for stealing her jewellery and watch, but not rape. The reason was that her hymen, was intact, as she was menstruating on that day and he did not penetrate. Moreover,the hospital had registered the charges of "attack on nurse with intention to rob" and not one of rape. I clearly remember reading this version in the newspapers,when this horrific and shocking incident had happened in 1973.

Then, around about Aruna's 50^th birthday in 1998,a journalist,Pinki Virani, pieced together Aruna's heartrending story in a book titled Aruna’s Story: The True Account of a Rape and its Aftermath and published by Penguin India.

During the course of her writing she dug out old files and came out with more startling discoveries - On that ill fated day,since Aruna was menstruating, Sohanlal sodomized her, strangled her with a dog chain while doing so and left her for dead. Why was this not revealed earlier? It seems,no one was ready to be the complainant for the sexual assault. Since her hymen was intact, her rape was considered as 'unnatural', which is gravely punishable by law. But then, the hospital which was already beleaguered after this mindless crime,was not willing to report an 'unnatural offense', which could lead to more unrest. The nurses of KEM hospital were already on strike, the first of its kind in independent India.

The most bizarre part of the story is that the culprit, after serving his term, changed his name and city and continues to work as a ward boy in a hospital.Whereas, Aruna's poverty stricken family have abandoned her.

Her devoted fiancé, after waiting patiently by her bedside for 4 years, gave in to family pressures and married .The day before his marriage,he visited her and giving her listless body one final hug he left, never to visit her again.This journalist, Pinki Virani,met the would -have been husband of Aruna, who is happily married with grown up children and doing well in his work. It seems, he was discouraged by the Dean of the hospital,who is no more ,not to get himself tangled in legal hassles but to concentrate on his upcoming MD exams.

I read somewhere that the journalist Pinki Virani and her husband have approached the authorities to be Aruna's legal guardian and to conduct her last rites when she dies,as she has no family.Also,part of the royalty of this book 'Aruna’s Story: The True Account of a Rape and its Aftermath' will go to Aruna, for her upkeep and to make her remaining life as comfortable as possible.When she dies, the cheques will be sent in her name to a charitable women’s organisation which educates young girls in nursing.