Even as police remains clueless about Aruna Shanbaug's assailant, a local newspaper in Maharashtra claimed to have traced him to a village in Uttar Pradesh where he is working as a labourer and said he cannot recall what happened on that fateful day.
Walmiki, who throttled Aruna with a dog leash rendering her a cripple at the prime of youth, said he cannot recall anything about what had happened on that day. However, he asked the journalist "why are you people calling it as rape". He claims that someone else raped Shanbaug.
Walmiki says that he and Shanbaug had a fight where he may have hit her, reports The Indian Express. He says that there was bad blood between the two. He claims that Shanbaug would ask only him of all the ward boys to feed the dogs and clean their cages despite his fear of the canines.
About the day of the incident, he says that he had asked her for leave as his mother-in-law was sick. He claims that she refused his request. He adds that Shanbaug said that if he went for leave, she would complain in writing that he did no work, stole dog food and yet went for leave. Walmiki said that he threatened to complain to her superiors about the way she allegedly treated him and that she played cards with other nurses and ward boys during duty hours. He claims that the altercation led to a scuffle where he hit her, but adds that he cannot recall the incident.
He says that he has repentance about the 'haadsa' and seeks forgiveness from Shanbaug and god. He says since the incident he has led somewhat an ascetic life, He has given up drinking, smoking bidis and non-vegetarian food. He says that his 'mistake' led to the death of his young daughter while he served time in prison.
Walmiki was jailed and released in 1980, not to be heard of again. Now after Aruna's death, he has been traced to Parpa village in Ghaziabad district of UP. He was never convicted for rape or sexual molestation but for assault and robbery.
For 42 years, Shanbaug lay comatose in the hospital until her death earlier this month, where she was cared by nurses and members of medical fraternity here .
She also became the subject of a landmark case about euthanasia that went all the way to the Supreme Court. There is a law that bears her name that allows passive euthanasia under strict conditions even though it could never be applied to her.
Pinki Virani, who wrote a biography of Shanbaug and petitioned the Supreme Court for mercy killing, has claimed, based on her talks with hospital ward boys, that Walmiki moved to Delhi, changed his identity and went on to work in a hospital there.
However, Walmiki says he never worked in Delhi. In the IE report he has dismissed reports of him working in Delhi or going back to KEM. He says he would have been impossible for him to go back to KEM after such an incident took place there. Speaking about other reports that had said that he had died of AIDS, he said that they would wife cry when his sons would gove them such information.
Taking note of the report that Sohanlal Bhartha Walmiki, who brutally attacked Aruna leaving her in a vegetative state for four decades, Mumbai Police said they will seek legal opinion to decide on any further action against him.
