Singapore:
When the young woman who has been the unwavering focus of India's attention and prayers died at a hospital on Singapore today, her parents were with her.
"I must say they bore this with a great deal of fortitude and courage," said Indian High Commissioner to Singapore TCA Raghavan. (
Read: Delhi gang-rape victim's body likely to be brought back to India today)
Their 23-year-old daughter who was traveling with a male friend was gang-raped in a bus in Delhi on December 16. The couple had just watched a movie together at a South Delhi mall.
The six men who were already on the bus struck the couple repeatedly with an iron rod before they raped the 23-year-old medical student.
To afford her education in Delhi, her parents had sold their small piece of land in Uttar Pradesh. When their daughter was fighting for her life in a Delhi hospital, they told Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar who visited with them that they hardly have enough to eat at home. Their meals, they reportedly told her, are often "
roti and
namak" (bread sprinkled with salt for flavour).
The Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit who met with them a few days later said they spoke of their concerns for their two sons, who are both in college. She said she promised them that government would assist in any way it could.
On Wednesday night, the family flew with the student on an air ambulance to a hospital in Singapore known for its expertise in organ transplants. The government had organised passports and visas for the patient and her family in a matter of hours, after the Cabinet cleared a proposal to fly her away if her doctors supported the plan.
By the time the media found about the plans to move her, three ambulances were waiting at her hospital in Delhi, two of which were used as a decoy.
The air ambulance arrived in Singapore on Thursday morning, the end of the journey had been a harrowing one with her blood pressure dropping and doctors performing emergency procedures to stabilise her.
At the Mount Elizabeth hospital in Singapore, a local paper
The Straits Times reported that the family used interpreters to communicate with the specialists and staff attending to the student.
(Read this story on The Straits Times)The paper said that the student's father was "shell-shocked" but reassured that the best possible care had been arranged for his child. "Reassured that the best is being done for my daughter, and the rest lies in the hands of God," the father said, according to the report.