DelhiRape Victim Father Recalls Their Last Meeting

His face has lined overnight and he looks haggard, but he keeps a brave front before his family. The faade 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 New Delhi. Tears are not far off and they fall freely.

"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 paramedical student 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 she was flown to Singapore later 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 on December 29 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 a 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 night on December 16, he said he sensed something was wrong when he found his daughter had switched off her cellphone.

"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 cellphone 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 has 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 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.

"Even while she was studying, she worked at a call centre during nights so that she could earn extra money for her studies," he added.

"Except her college fees, I only used to send her one or two thousand rupees whenever she demanded in her four-year physiotherapy course. Even while studying in school, she used to take tuitions," the father added. He blames himself for his daughter's fate.

"Mere hi kisi galti ki saja meri beti ko mil gai ('My daughter had to meet this fate due to some fault of mine')," he said.

The sheer brutality of the gang-rape shocked the nation. The woman was raped by five men and a juvenile in a private bus who then threw her and her male friend on the road - bloodied and without clothes after nearly an-hour long ordeal.

She became a rallying point in Delhi and elsewhere as protesters demanded strong anti-rape laws. The spontaneous protests forced the government to take several steps.

"The six should feel the pain and the anguish. They should realise what they have done to us and her," he cried in anguish.

A fast track court is hearing the case. One of the accused includes a boy, who, according to the law, cannot be tried for the crime.

"My daughter awakened not only India, but the whole world. I will feel proud if a law is named after her," he said.

He said his daughter once fell seriously ill as an infant.

"At that time, I managed to save her, but this time, I couldn't," he said.