The male friend (the AFP calls him her boyfriend) of the 23-year-old student who was raped and beaten by six men on a New Delhi bus — and died two weeks later of brain damage — spoke publicly for the first time to Zee News today.
He said no one tried to help the couple after they were thrown off the bus by her rapists and that it took the cops over two hours to take them to the hospital when they finally arrived on the scene.
“After throwing us off the bus, they tried to mow us down but I saved my friend by pulling her away in the nick of time. We were without clothes. We tried to stop passersby. Several auto rickshaws, cars and bikes slowed down but none stopped for about 25 minutes. Then, someone on patrolling, stopped and called the police,” he recounted.
He said nobody, not even the police, gave them clothes or called an ambulance.
“My friend was bleeding profusely; I was more concerned about her. But instead of taking us to a nearby hospital, they (police) took us to a hospital (Safdarjung) that was far away.”
Things weren’t better at the hospital:
“Even at the hospital, we were made to wait and I had to literally beg for clothes. I asked one ‘safai karamchari’ to give me some clothes or curtains and he asked me to wait. But the clothes never came. I then borrowed a stranger’s mobile and called my relatives, but just told them that I had met with an accident. My treatment started only after my relatives came.”
His girlfriend was optimistic until the end, he said: “When I had met my friend in the hospital, she was smiling. She was able to write and was positive. I never felt that she did not want to live.”
He reiterated that prayers and peaceful protests about his girlfriend’s death won’t help: “You have to help people on the road when they need help,” he said. “Protest and change should not only be for her but for the coming generations as well.”
[Zee News]