“I wish I was dead,” cries Asha Rani, the badly traumatised 19-year-old who fell from the Yeshwanthpur-Mysore train after a group of four boys tried to molest her in full public view at around 1.30 p.m. Tuesday.
Asha may have got away with superficial injuries on her body and and a small cut on the left side of her head despite her sudden eviction from the moving train, but the mental trauma she has suffered could go far deeper. Fortunately she was saved more serious injury as the train had slowed down after crossing the Kulli river bridge, says, Dr Shivakumar K.M., medical superintendent of the Mandya district hospital where she is being treated.
The incident on the train is only one of many traumatic events in the young girl’s life — she lost both her parents shen she was just four, and a brother recently. “My father committed suicide by hanging and my mother set herself ablaze after dousing in kerosene 15 years ago in Hubli. My brother killed himself by consuming poison recently. My grandmother, who took care of me after my parents died, also died five years ago,” Asha recounts painfully.
But bravely moving on, she completed her second PUC and moved to Bengaluru three years ago, where she stayed with a friend and got a job in a garments factory in Bommanahalli. But after she developed differences with her, she moved to Mysore six months ago to live with a couple she had become friendly with in Ashokpuram, she says. But now, they don’t want to have anything to do with her after her humiliation on the train, she cries. “I tried contacting Madan (her friend’s husband), but he said he didn’t know me. They are worried about being associated with me now. My aunt Jyothi and uncle Manju in Hubli don’t want to see me either,” Asha adds, tears in her eyes.
Recalling her latest misfortune, Asha says she left work early on Tuesday because she was unwell. She bought a ticket to Kengeri, where she had some work, and boarded the Yeshwanthpur-Mysore Express to get there. It was while she was having her meal at the Kengeri station that she saw the four boys following her. “I was scared, and without finishing my meal or buying another ticket I boarded the train again, climbing into the tenth bogie. But they followed me. One of the boys even grabbed my hand and pulled me. When a passenger tried to intervene, he slapped him. Seeing this the other passengers decided not to intervene. I managed to pull my hand away and run to the first bogie, where I sat down on the footboard.
But they followed me there, too. I finally asked them what they wanted. In response one of the boys offered me Rs 200 to go with him and when I threatened to slipper him, he slapped me hard and I fell from the train,” she recalls, adding that the boys appeared drunk.
Asha may now have no friends to go to either. When Deccan Chronicle contacted Madan, he first denied knowing her at all, but later claimed he had met her just once, a month ago, in Mysore. “She said she was and orphan and hungry. I bought her some food but never met her after that,” he maintained. If he did not know her at all, how did she come to have his number and know his wife?