Hapur, Ghaziabad: His victim lay in a vegetative state for 42 years while he lived a normal life. But Aruna Shanbaug's death has brought Sohanlal Valmiki face-to-face with his past.
Sohanlal has been living in Parpa village near Hapur in Ghaziabad for the last 35 years, since being released from a Mumbai prison after serving a seven-year sentence for raping nurse Shanbaug. He worked as a sweeper at a nearby power plant and no one knew of his past crimes.
All that changed with the death of Shanbaug on May 18.
Reports now suggest that people of Parpa want him evicted him from the village owing to the shame his existence has brought to the village.
A media report quoted village headman Joginder Singh that the villagers came to know about Sohanlal's past through media reports and were horrified to know that a man living in their midst had committed such a gruesome crime.
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.
Singh said that he will go by the wish of the people of the village; if they want him evicted then the panchayat may decide so. Parpa is not Sohanlal's native village, he used to live at his wife's house.
Meanwhile, Sohanlal, who had left supposedly with a a TV crew to a channel in Noida last Saturday is yet to return. The villagers speculate that he may have gone into hiding.
Earlier, Sohan Lal told local media persons that while he had worked in the same hospital where Shanbaug was raped, he had nothing to do with the henious crime. He also said that the police had implicated him.
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.
