![]() My wife wanted to visit her but Aruna didiji refused. My wife’s mother, who then lived in the house where I now live, was very ill. “That night I had gone to ask Aruna didiji for leave for a few days. Valmiki could not recall the date of the incident that “destroyed everything.” ![]() “I told the doctor in charge and my supervisor to transfer me, I complained about her but no one listened. She knew I was scared of dogs…there were other sweepers, but she picked me each time the dogs had to be fed or their cages swept. He spoke of a “troubled relationship” with Shanbaug, who was with the animal experimentation unit at the hospital. Later, he said he did not “remember anything” about the rape. I did not rape her, it must have been someone else,” he claimed. There was no rape…they beat me up in the police station and kept saying it was rape. We both hit each other, I may have pulled the ornaments they said I stole during the scuffle. There was a fight, it was dark and I panicked. Reluctant to discuss the assault on Shanbaug, he opened up after moving away from fellow workers and neighbours. I am tired of the memories, I want to die now.” He has heard that people believed he had died of “a deadly disease.” He added, “My son would tell us these things and my wife would cry. How was it possible for anyone to go back to the hospital after such a thing? I left Mumbai, why would I go back to the hospital to see her?” That I tried to kill her (Shanbaug)…I could barely sleep for 10 years after the incident. He rubbishes reports that he returned to KEM Hospital after serving his sentence. ![]() His wife has gone to Pune to attend a wedding. Valmiki’s sons too work as labourers, earning Rs 200 to Rs 300 a day. Where is the time to read newspapers?” he said. “I leave home at 6 am for work and return by 8 pm. The TV in his two-room house was not working, the village was without electricity for a week and the family does not read newspapers. Wearing a rudraksha mala and carrying a photograph of his guru in his wallet, Valmiki says he learnt of Shanbaug’s death only after a journalist from the Marathi newspaper Sakaal Times came looking for him earlier this week. Age has caught up with him - he says he is 66 though his son puts his age at 72 - but he continues to work for a labour contractor at a NTPC power plant 25 km away. He worked as a labourer to make ends meet. But all these years, Valmiki lived in his ancestral home in Dadupur and then moved to his father-in-law’s house in Parpa, 60 km from Ghaziabad. Reports said he came back to KEM Hospital, had moved to Delhi to work in a hospital, died of tuberculosis or of AIDS. Valmiki was convicted of assault and robbery, but not rape as it was not included in the complaint made to police, and served a seven-year sentence at Yerawada jail in Pune. A sweeper at the hospital, Valmiki throttled Shanbaug with a dog chain and sexually assaulted her, leaving her in a vegetative state and triggering a debate on euthanasia before her death on May 18. It was on the night of Novemthat he attacked Shanbaug at the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital. “I have deep regret, I want to seek forgiveness from her and God,” he said. Valmiki blames all this on the “haadsa” (incident) involving “Aruna didiji” (Shanbaug). A son was born 14 years after I left jail,” Valmiki told The Indian Express. ![]() For many years after my release, I didn’t touch my wife. I had a daughter before I was sentenced, and she died while I was in jail. “I gave up non-vegetarian food, bad habits like smoking bidis and drinking. Less than a fortnight after the death of Shanbaug, who had been in a vegetative state for four decades after the brutal attack on her in Mumbai’s KEM Hospital, Valmiki was traced to Parpa village in Uttar Pradesh, where he lives with his wife, two sons, a daughter and three grandchildren. Sohanlal Valmiki, the man who disappeared after serving a seven-year jail term after he sexually assaulted nurse Aruna Shanbaug, says his life has been a penance for 42 years during which he gave up his “bad habits”.
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