Room No 4 at KEM to be named after Aruna Shanbaug

Nurses at KEM hospital today remembered their colleague Aruna Shanbaug, who passed away three weeks ago, on her birth anniversary with the hospital administration deciding to name Room No 4, where she stayed for 42 years, after her.

"We have decided to name Room No 4 after Aruna," KEM hospital dean Dr Avinash Supe told PTI. "The room will also be used for the public and staff," he added.

Shanbaug, a nurse at the hospital, existed comatose in the room after being subjected to a brutal sexual assault in 1973 by a ward boy, who tried to throttle her with a dog chain, leaving her in a permanently vegetative state.

The hospital nurses fondly remembered Shanbaug and visited her room in the morning to offer tributes. They put flowers and cut a cake. Had she lived three weeks more, she would be celebrating her 68th birthday.

A commemorative programme was also organised in the hospital auditorium by the nursing staff. The demand for renaming the room was made by the nursing staff shortly after Shanbaug's death.

Later, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced that the Thane Nursing Training College would also be renamed after her. A Marathi biography on Shanbaug, 'Vyatha Arunachi' (Aruna's Agony), written by senior journalist Neha Purav, was released here this afternoon.

Purav said she used to sit at Aruna's bedside for many years, and also interacted with the nurses who cared for her all these years. A Mumbai journalist last week traced Sohanlal Valmiki, the former hospital sweeper, who perpetrated the crime on Shanbaug to a village in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh.