About Aruna Shanbaug

Aruna Shanbhag is a nurse from Haldipur, Shimoga, Karnataka in India. In 1973, while she was working at King Edward Memorial Hospital, Parel, Mumbai she was assaulted by a Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, a ward boy at the hospital. Walmiki was motivated partly by resentment for being ordered about and castigated by Shanbaug. On the night of 27 November 1973 he attacked her while she was changing clothes in the hospital basement for leaving her shift. He choked her with a dog chain and sodomized her. The asphyxiation during the course of the assault cut off oxygen supply to her brain resulting in brain stem contusion injury and cervical cord injury as well as leaving her cortically blind. The initial medical examination to verify rape as the crime found that Aruna had no vaginal bruises and her hymen was intact. Aruna was menstruating on the day and therefore the rapist did not penetrate