NEW DELHI, AUGUST 16: A suicide note written on the back of a used paper is a grim reminder of what prompts a rape victim to take her own life. A 13-year-old girl from Sultanpuri, was gangraped on July 4. Things must have reached a head when on August 12 she climbed down the terrace where her five sisters, two brothers and parents were sleeping, and burnt herself.Help came from Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) and an NGO, Ummeed. It was, however, not enough or timely to revive a girl who had grown isolated from the folds of the society.In the note which was accidently found today in the room she burnt herself, a little of her trauma emerges. She says: ``I am going to kill myself. I know I am going to become a mother and I do not want to lead this life of sin.I am writing this so that the guilty (Surender, Brijesh, Rajesh, Jogender, Ramchander and Baljit) can be punished.'' There is a fervent appeal to take the note to the police.Even after she was raped allegedly by these men (one of whom, 18-year-old Surinder, was her neighbour), she tried to lead a normal life. She started going to school a few days after the incident. Quiet, but fond of reading, she wanted to study further. According to her parents, Nithari Sarvodayaya Kanya Vidyalalya refused to mark her attendance for that one week. Instead, they summoned her father. ``I was told that she was bringing disrepute to the school, so could I please take her transfer certificate and get her admitted somewhere else,'' said Roop Kishore, her father.``After that day, she just would not talk to anybody. The shock was too much for her to bear,'' said her mother, Angoori. She used to spend all her time praying to Lord Shiva.The family of nine children, with no fixed source of income and plagued by many other problems, did not take her seriously. So when social workers from DCW came two days after the rape and left their contact numbers after promising to put the girl in a residential school, they did not take up the offer. The DSW forgot about the case till they read about her death in the newspapers.Ummeed stepped in after she was rejected by the school. The NGO workers hadpromised to come today and help with school admissions. Before that, she had been taken for a medical check-up to check whether she had conceived. ``When the results came, the doctor told us that she was not pregnant, but I think she did not believe us,'' said Angoori.Since she was an introvert and did not have any friends. Her only window to the society was TV which her family rented on Sundays. From the note, which is the only indicator of her inner turmoil, it is clear that she worked herself up into believing that she was pregnant and that she could not bear to live in sin. She thought by dying she could ensure that the guilty ``do not come out alive from the jail''. The guilty men have been arrested. According to the suicide note, Surender's sister and mother had colluded with him.This is the second case where the school has played a role in a rape case. The first was a girl from Chaukhandi who was raped a month ago and the school had issued her a tranfer certificate. The DCW has taken up the case. Fearing for this girl, the principal of her school was summoned today for an explanation after the suicide.The social workers who were at the Sultanpuri house today were remorseful but it was not clear whether they have learnt any lessons for the future. ``We came the very next day, spoke to her, it was clear that she was depressed, we asked the parents to bring her to us but they did not take any initiative,'' said a social worker from DCW.
