Dumaria’s minor rape survivor to return home today

Sexually assaulted by a man of her father’s age, she had travelled in an ambulance in a semi-conscious state to Ranchi’s Medanta Hospital with HT team and her harried parents along her side almost resigned to their fate. That was August 30’ 2015.

Cut to November 2’ 2015, she was seen dexterously filling colours in an art book, surfing channels of the television set in her room with ease and playing with teddy bears, her most precious possessions.

Suffering from ruptured vagina and intestines, there were remote chances of her survival then. Two months of extensive treatment under the supervision of some known medical experts of the state, the nine-year-old rape survivor from Dumaria, a remote Jharkhand block, is now completely cured and desperate to get back to her home.

On Tuesday, Guddi-that’s how doctors at Medanta address her— will take her first steps out of the hospital after the incident in June that left her paralysed and virtually risked her life.

Guddi was brutally raped by a 42-year-old driver from her village Hatiapata, around 200 km east of capital Ranchi, in June and was battling for life shuttling between her thatched hut and the local health center in her father’s arms almost every day for nursing of her wounds. On August 29, HT broke the story highlighting the father’s plight, who couldn’t even afford a cycle. The story moved thousands across India and overseas drawing a sea of support from government, non- government agencies and individuals.

Guddi is excited that she would be meeting her friends back in the village.