Young woman rescued from East Delhi house where she locked herself for a year

Doctors said the woman,later admitted to IHBAS,showed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. But her vital parameters were stable. doctors said.

Representatives of the NGO Megamind said the woman,who lived alone,had gone into depression and become a recluse after her parents died some five years ago. They said she locked herself up only over the last one year.

Megamind president Lata Chaudhary,who is also the president of the RWA of Subhash Park,Shahdara,said the woman had not paid water and electricity bills for about one and half years and had been drinking “dirty water”.

“In the last few months,I tried to speak to her,but she never opened the door. I tried to restore her water connection,but she refused to let me in. Her house was dirty and stinking. She finally let the team enter her house today,after the doctors spoke to her through the door for about 30-45 minutes,” Chaudhary said.

Neighbours told Chaudhary that the woman never came to terms with the death of her parents. “Residents said she threw out idols of gods and goddesses that her mother kept,screaming how the gods had wronged her. This was around four years ago,” Chaudhary said.

She said the neighbours had also quoted incidents from a couple of years ago,when the woman used to take pictures of people on her mobile phone,and run away screaming that they were thieves. She would threaten to report to the local police station with those pictures.

On Friday,the NGO contacted the SDM of the area,who called up the IHBAS team,to arrange the woman’s rescue.

IHBAS director Dr Nimesh Desai said the woman was hallucinating and appeared to have definite signs of paranoid schizophrenia.

“We admitted her in our short observation facility around 4 pm on Friday,and are trying to further assess her condition. She seems to be a case of home-bound mentally ill — patients who lock themselves in due to helplessness or fear.”

A doctor evaluating the woman said,“She looks underfed. Her clothes and hair were dirty and unkempt. She was not able to speak coherently,and kept giving us different details about herself. None of the numbers of her purported relatives that she provided seemed to work,” the doctor said.

The doctor said the woman kept saying her parents had been murdered,and her neighbours were trying to grab her property.