“I am no longer bothered about what happened that day,” she told The Indian Express today. “Instead, that incident has made me bolder and I have resolved that I will not back down.” A student of Class X — her Board exams are next year — Chameli sits on the verandah of her bamboo house with a tin roof in a village 240 km away from Guwahati in Sonitpur district. One of three brothers helps her with the intravenous fluid supplement she has been on since Sunday.

Gogoi has announced a Rs 1 lakh “compensation” to Chameli. “I don’t want to talk about any monetary compensation. It is of no use,” she says. The immediate milestone to cross, however, is her Class X exams. “I need to be educated,” she says, “I need to at least graduate.”

Chameli had gone to Guwahati by bus with two of her brothers, a cousin sister and several other boys and girls from her village and those adjoining, all travelling through Friday night to be part of Saturday’s rally organized by the All Adivasi Students Association of Assam (AASAA). The rally was called to demand Scheduled Tribe status to the Adivasi and tea-labourer communities (of present-day Jharkhand, Orissa, and parts of Bihar, MP, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh).

Chameli says she was trying to rescue her cousin from the grip of a group of hooligans trying to molest her during the violence and chaos that the rally had turned into when she herself fell into the trap. It was one Bhagiram Barman, a local shopkeeper, who not only helped her with his own shirt after she ran for about half-a-kilometre but also handed her over to the police. By then, Chameli had been trapped in several cameras and numerous cellphones — and then on national TV.

She is the youngest child and the only daughter of Mangloo Orang, 65, a farmer, who recalls with pride the story of how his grandfather Kripa had come as a labourer from Chandapara in Ranchi to the tea gardens in Assam during the Raj. Orang has, incidentally, served a five-year term in jail in connection with a murder case in a property dispute — he claims his ancestral property was being fraudulently grabbed.

Chameli’s mother Durga is illiterate. “I know something very bad has happened with my daughter. But I am proud that she is facing it bravely,” she says.

Orang’s family of nine (including two grandchildren) live in two huts made of bamboo mats and tin roofs, one having three rooms plus a verandah. The other has two rooms and is one of the few which has an electricity connection in the village.

The family has nine bighas with the three sons helping the father grow paddy that helps meet the family’s requirement for the whole year. “We don’t have to buy rice but it is difficult to make both ends meet,” says Orang. “I don’t know what my sons will do if they don’t get jobs. It is not possible for the three of them to run their families when they grow up with the land that I have.”

Back in her village, hundreds have visited Chameli over the past three days and local leaders are already talking about her as an icon. “I am surprised by her willpower and courage. Any other girl would have collapsed after what happened that Saturday. But she is surely of different mettle. She is a story of courage that needs to be told to the rest of the world,” says Lata Lakra, a leader of the All Adivasi Mahila Samiti, who came down all the way from Gossaigaon in Lower Assam to meet Chameli. “What happened to her will only help make the case for Scheduled Tribe status to our community stronger.”

(On the family’s request, all names have been changed)