By Maya Palit
The most terrifying thing about the attack on Aparna Kalra, a 45-year-old journalist, is that it appears to have been completely arbitrary. On Wednesday evening, Kalra went out for a walk in the park near her home in Ashok Vihar Phase III, New Delhi. She was later found unconscious in a pool of blood by people who notified the police.
But Kalra had a severe head injury, with some parts of her skull missing, a frontal lobe fracture, a blood clot in her brain, and injuries to her brain nerves. She is in the Intensive Care Unit at Fortis hospital recovering from the attack. Doctors had to operate on her because there was a lot of fluid collected in her brain, which could have been fatal.
The good news is that Kalra is now stable and able to speak, but it’s a small mercy for someone who was attacked out of the blue, without provocation, five minutes from her house. Some sources reported that according to the police, two men passed lewd comments, gagged her and tried to drag her into the bushes, one of whom then hit her with a brick when she was resisting. Doctors have said there was no sexual assault, but it isn’t clear whether there was a molestation of any kind.
The details of the case are still a little hazy because the police haven’t been able to settle on a motivation for the crime, and there were no eyewitnesses. Here’s wishing for a full recovery for Aparna Kalra from this bizarre, unwarranted, and vicious attack.