She survived 13 days after brutal assault as she was tough, says doctor

NEWDELHI: “In my close to 40 years of experience as a surgeon, I have not come across more brutal assault on a person. It was manmade and irreparable,” Dr Sunil Jain told HT.

The Supreme Court on Friday awarded death sentence to all the four convicts in the case. As the head of the department of surgery at Safdarjung Hospital, Jain had operated upon the 23-year-old December 16 gang-rape victim.

Recalling the moment when he was called for the emergency case in middle of the night, Dr Jain said, “She had severe injuries to her private parts and abdomen, the magnitude of which we realized only when we wheeled her into the operation theatre.” “It was a foregone conclusion from day one that she will not survive because of the nature of injuries.”

According to the team of doctors who treated her, the only thing that could have saved her was an intestinal transplant. Though it was the answer, no one had ever attempted it.

“Nobody had ever seen a transplant; we had only read about it in medical textbooks,” Dr Jain had said. The doctors had not expected her to survive for long because of the extent of injuries, but the strong-willed girl sustained in that critical condition for nearly two weeks.

“She was mentally. She knew she wouldn’t survive but still would keep repeating that if she survived, she would complete her course,” said Dr Jain.