His face has lined overnight and he looks haggard, but he keeps a brave front before his family. The façade, however, shatters when he recalls his last meeting with his 23-year-old daughter, who was brutally gang-raped on a cold December night in Delhi.
Tears are not far off and they fall freely soon.
‘I clearly remember our last meeting. She was lying on the (Safdarjung) hospital bed. She gestured me to come near and asked me whether I had eaten. When I nodded, she told me to sleep. She then held my hand and kissed it,’ the distraught father of the dead trainee physiotherapist said.
‘I can never forget that moment because it was the last time I got a chance to talk to her. ‘Then her condition worsened, and flown to Singapore on the same day. I never got a chance again,’ he said as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Sitting in his modest two-bedroom house in southwest Delhi, the 53-year-old, throughout his interaction, kept his eyes fixed on the photograph of his daughter, who died in a Singapore hospital 29 December last year, 13 days after she was gang-raped in a moving bus.
Life for the family has come to a standstill. But the father now hopes for justice.
‘I want the six rapists to hang. Nothing less will be acceptable,’ he said.
The unplastered brick house, in which they have been living for 25 years since he left his hometown in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, seems empty to them, as the young woman, who was the first-born, is no more to light up their lives.
‘Oh God! Why did I ever come to Delhi?’ said the teary-eyed father, who works as a porter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Recalling the fateful day on 16 December night, he said he sensed something was wrong when he found his daughter had switched off her mobile phone.
‘She had cooked food for us. After lunch, I left for work. She also left and told her mother that she will be back by evening. When she did not return by 8 pm, we got worried.
‘But after 9 pm when we found her mobile was switched off, we felt something wrong had happened because she never used to do that. As soon as I returned home at night, I received a call from Safdarjang hospital regarding the incident,’ he said.
Looking at his daughter’s 15x15 inch photograph, which have been placed on a table on one side of the house, he said despite several problems in their life, he was always hopeful about his family’s future.
‘But now I’m a broken man,’ he said. His two sons are both studying. He described his daughter as a bright and intelligent girl.
‘She always stood first or second in class. She was very studious. She wanted to do master’s in physiotherapy after clearing her bachelor in January,’ he added.
Tears are not far off and they fall freely soon.
‘I clearly remember our last meeting. She was lying on the (Safdarjung) hospital bed. She gestured me to come near and asked me whether I had eaten. When I nodded, she told me to sleep. She then held my hand and kissed it,’ the distraught father of the dead trainee physiotherapist said.
‘I can never forget that moment because it was the last time I got a chance to talk to her. ‘Then her condition worsened, and flown to Singapore on the same day. I never got a chance again,’ he said as tears rolled down his cheeks.
Sitting in his modest two-bedroom house in southwest Delhi, the 53-year-old, throughout his interaction, kept his eyes fixed on the photograph of his daughter, who died in a Singapore hospital 29 December last year, 13 days after she was gang-raped in a moving bus.
Life for the family has come to a standstill. But the father now hopes for justice.
‘I want the six rapists to hang. Nothing less will be acceptable,’ he said.
The unplastered brick house, in which they have been living for 25 years since he left his hometown in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, seems empty to them, as the young woman, who was the first-born, is no more to light up their lives.
‘Oh God! Why did I ever come to Delhi?’ said the teary-eyed father, who works as a porter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Recalling the fateful day on 16 December night, he said he sensed something was wrong when he found his daughter had switched off her mobile phone.
‘She had cooked food for us. After lunch, I left for work. She also left and told her mother that she will be back by evening. When she did not return by 8 pm, we got worried.
‘But after 9 pm when we found her mobile was switched off, we felt something wrong had happened because she never used to do that. As soon as I returned home at night, I received a call from Safdarjang hospital regarding the incident,’ he said.
Looking at his daughter’s 15x15 inch photograph, which have been placed on a table on one side of the house, he said despite several problems in their life, he was always hopeful about his family’s future.
‘But now I’m a broken man,’ he said. His two sons are both studying. He described his daughter as a bright and intelligent girl.
‘She always stood first or second in class. She was very studious. She wanted to do master’s in physiotherapy after clearing her bachelor in January,’ he added.