Happy, but nightmare returns: Suryanelli victim’s mother

The mother of the Suryanelli rape victim Thursday described the SC order striking down the acquittals of the alleged rapists as divine intervention, but said it had brought back memories of the incident and the humiliating public attention the case had attracted.

"We see the court order as the beginning of the delivery of much-delayed justice. It is God's intervention. We are happy, although the reopening of the case has made us a subject of public attention again. We have not managed to escape the mental trauma since our daughter went missing," the mother, a retired nurse, said from Kottayam, where the family now lives.

"People would stop and stare at our house in Suryanelli (in Idukki). My elder daughter, who then worked as a nurse in the Gulf, said she would not return unless we moved. So we sold our newly-built house and one-acre cardamom farm at a throwaway price and moved," she said.

The mother said the extended family and friends had abandoned them after her daughter was abducted. The elder daughter, who had stopped working, had been persuaded recently to join a hospital in Karnataka. "She has developed scorn for life and is averse to marriage," the mother said.

The question of marriage for her younger daughter did not arise, she said. "Will you find a person who will be magnanimous enough to offer a new life? And even if someone comes, how can we believe him? The four of us will hold on to each other until our deaths."

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