Shanbaug rape accused was living a 'normal' life in a UP village

The rape accused in the nurse Aruna Shanbaug case, Sohan Lal Bharti Valmiki, has been living in a Uttar Pradesh village for the last 35 years, local meda reports suggest.

He has been in the Parpa village of Hapur distict with his in-laws since being released from a Mumbai prison after serving a seven-year sentence for raping nurse Shanbaug, who died recently in a Mumbai hospital after being comatose for 42 long years.

Locals say they were not aware of the antescedents of Sohan Lal, now serving as a sweeper at NTPC power plant in Dadri.

Locals also said that he was not a native of the village and was from Dadupur village of Bulandshahr in western Uttar Pradesh. His wife Vimla is currently not in the village and is said to have gone to a relative's place in Pune and his son Krishna, who along with his brother Ravindra works in a factory at Secunderabad as sweepers, feigned ignorance about the crime his father is accused of.

Villagers say they were aghast to know of the crime that Sohan Lal had committed as they found him to be "very normal" and rather well behaved.

Sohan Lal has, however, told local media persons that while he had worked in the same hospital where the nurse was raped he had nothing to do with the henious crime. He also said that the police had implicated him.

After serving sentence he was let off in 1980 after which he came to live in his native place Dadupur only to find that his land had been usurped by his brothers after which his in-laws called him to Parpa and he has been working at the NTPC power plant in Dadri for the last two decades.

Shanbaug was dragged with a dog chain around her neck at the KEM hospital in 1973 and brutally raped. Due to the rupturing of her neck nerve, she went into coma and led a vegetative life for over 42 years.

-- Indo-Asian News Service

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