By Quaid Najmi, IANS,
Mumbai : Nearly four months after she was murdered, IT centre worker Anandita Mishra-Goswami’s five-year-old daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy continues to remain in shock and yearn for her mother in a Mumbai hospital.
Since Oct 17 last year, when Anandita, a 34-year-old employee of Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) and a Navi Mumbai resident, was stabbed outside a railway station by a man she had spurned, her daughter Ahana has been in a semi-comatose state with multiple health complications.
“Seeing her mother’s lifeless body covered in a white cloth, Ahana went into a state of deep shock. She stopped eating and drinking and kept crying for her mother,” said Poornima Goswami, Anandita’s aged mother who is now the child’s sole guardian.
After completing Anandita’s funeral rites, Ahana was rushed to a medico who recommended hospitalisation and she was admitted to the Mahatma Gandhi Mission Hospital, Navi Mumbai.
“She was there for over three months and the hospital bills came to Rs.378,000, which I could not afford. However, the hospital authorities were very kind and they waived off Rs.300,000. They discharged Ahana without imposing any conditions for the balance payment and I brought her to Jaslok Hospital for further treatment,” Poornima, tears streaming down her eyes, told IANS from the hospital ward Wednesday morning.
She said though the DAKC helped out with an amount of Rs.200,000, through a group insurance scheme, the amount was spent in the expensive medication for Ahana.
She has, however, vowed to pay all the medical bills as and when her resources improve.
“My other two children, a son and daughter, are ordinary middle-class employees so they cannot help much. My son had arranged for finances to enable Anandita to buy the flat in Ghansoli suburb after her husband deserted the family,” she said.
Poornima is apprehensive of naming Anandita’s husband but accused him of “mentally and physically torturing Anandita before and after marriage”, particularly when she was pregnant with Ahana.
“Most times he remained jobless, was a vagabond with all vices and he and his family abandoned Anandita after Ahana was born as a child with multiple defects,” she cried.
Fazal Nabi, the paediatrics-in-charge for Ahana, said the patient suffers from celebral palsy and is mentally retarded owing to deficient oxygen supply to her brain.
“Since she cannot swallow food normally owing to facial muscle problems, all solids and liquids go into the stomach and lungs, leading to infections. She will undergo a surgery shortly for drilling a hole in her stomach to solve this problem,” Nabi told IANS.
In a gesture of goodwill, Jaslok Hospital has offered complete free treatment to Ahana, but Poornima said after discharge, there will be many other expenses.
Poornima has also been flooded with calls offering financial and medical help from the US, Europe, Pakistan, China and Arabian Gulf countries.
“God is great. I have very little time left in this world. I want Ahana’s future secured before I can close my eyes peacefully,” Poornima said.
Anandita had left her DAKC office to catch a suburban train for Ghansoli suburb of Navi Mumbai when her jilted suitor accosted her and stabbed her repeatedly. Her body was found a couple of hours later – she had bled to death.
Even as police launched a manhunt for the killer and nabbed him after a week, the hospital authorities took Anandita’s body home the following day.
A week after she was murdered, Anandita’s alleged killer, Jacob Pinto, was nabbed from Sangli in south-west Maharashtra and is under custody. Married since 2006, Pinto worked in DKAC, where Anandita worked as a manager for human resources.
Anandita had repeatedly rejected Pinto’s romantic overtures for over three years after which he planned to eliminate her at an opportune time, say police.
(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at [email protected])