And Then They
Carved His Eyes Out
By Priya Ganapati
Rediff.com
October 17, 2003
In
the villages of Bihar, small scuffles can have incomprehensible ramifications.
As Dhanvir Yadav
and his family discovered.
On the night of
September 13, Dhanvir Yadav -- all of 14 -- had his eyes gouged out
with a sickle by a group of boys on the reported orders of a sarpanch
of a nearby village.
His crime is still
unclear.
"I don't know
when I was beaten and hurt. They called me cycle chor [thief]. I don't
know what they are talking about. I only knew Ranvir in the crowd and
we had a fight a few days ago," says Dhanvir who is currently undergoing
treatment at the Agarwal eye hospital in Bangalore.
Blindings are not
a new form of punishment in Bihar.
Twenty-three years
ago, the Bhagalpur blindings case, where the police blinded 31 undertrials,
shook up the country. Recently two people in Bhojpur had their eyes
cut out, for their alleged involvement in theft, while the eyes of three
others were gouged out in Nawada for allegedly outraging the modesty
of a woman.
Even after the case
of Dhanvir became known, another boy was blinded for allegedly stealing
bulls.
The eldest in a
family of seven children, Dhanvir has spent most of his years grazing
buffaloes and looking after livestock in his village, Barkhi Kothiya,
in Khagaria district in Bihar.
His father Sriram
Yadav, a contract labourer earns about Rs 70 a day and the family stays
in a thatched house with a single room.
About three months
ago, Dhanvir ran into Ranvir, an older boy who used to graze his herd
nearby. The acquaintance soon turned into a tentative friendship.
But one evening,
a fight broke out between the two over 'chana' [gram] which Dhanvir
refused to share with his friend.
It seemed like a
small tiff till a few days later, when Dhanvir went to visit his aunt's
house. Suddenly Ranvir came over and told him that his mother was ill
and he would take him back to his parents immediately.
An unsuspecting
Dhanvir went along, only to be taken to a nearby village, Mathrapur,
where about 15 boys lay in wait for him. They took him forcibly to the
sarpanch -- headman -- of the village and said that he was a 'cycle
chor.'
The sarpanch, Ashok
Singh, then allegedly declared that Dhanvir should be beaten and his
eyes taken out.
"The boys tied
my hands and legs and started beating me with sticks. There must have
been 15 to 20 of them. It hurt a lot and beyond that I can't remember
now," says Dhanvir.
What Dhanvir can't
remember is the most gruesome part. With a sickle commonly used for
cutting grass, his eyes were gouged out.
Bleeding and in
extreme pain, he was thrown on the road where a few villagers saw him
and took him to the nearby hospital.
His father heard
about the incident only the next morning.
"I thought
he was to stay over at his aunt's house. Next morning some people told
me my son is sick and in hospital since his eyes have been damaged,"
Sriram Yadav said.
He tried to file
a police complaint but since he did not know the perpetrators, the local
constable instead asked him to name an unknown person. In turn, he assured
him he would get five acres of land as compensation. Sriram Yadav refused.
"I cannot name
someone I don't know. It is wrong to do that. We are common people and
we don't want to hurt anyone," he said.
The district magistrate
heard of the incident and arranged for Dhanvir and his parents to be
taken to the government hospital in Patna.
It was the family's
first trip to Patna. With no money, no place to stay in the city and
just one kilo of 'sattu' (powdered gram) in hand, the family went to
Patna to get Dhanvir treated.
For a week, he was
treated at the government hospital.
On September 17,
Dr Sunita Agarwal, an ophthalmologist who runs the Agarwal Eye Hospital
in Bangalore, read about Dhanvir in a newspaper.
She immediately
called up the newspaper's editor and offered to treat Dhanvir if he
could be traced and brought to
Bangalore.
"There is always
tragedy we keep hearing about. In this case I could do something about
the situation as we have cutting edge technology. I cannot do anything
to save his vision but I could do something to give him a face,"
says Dr Agarwal.
And that is where
some much needed help from the government came by. Dilip Verma, a Bihar
MLA, took on Dhanvir's case. Verma got Aviation Minister Rajiv Pratap
Rudy, the MP from Chhapra in Bihar, to sponsor air tickets for Dhanvir
and his father to Bangalore.
Verma sent his personal
secretary to escort the duo till Bangalore.
In Bangalore, Dr
Agarwal went to the airport to pick up Dhanvir and his father. It was
almost midnight by the time he was brought to the hospital.
She could not wait
to examine the boy. When the bandages were removed off a grisly sight
confronted her.
Dhanvir's right
eyeball was carved out and hanging loose. It was held up only by a few
folds of skin. His lower eyelid was gone and the eyeball had popped
out. In his left eye, the upper eyelid had been cut and the eye had
inflamed to over twice its size.
The boy's face had
puffed up and looked barely human.
"I thought
I had seen it all in my 40 years -- gunshot wounds, knife wounds, war
injuries. But this was a really gory sight. The eyeball was gored open,
cut like an egg and there were blood clots surrounding it. There was
no lid and the left eye was
swollen terribly," recalls Dr Agarwal.
So startled was
she that she asked Sriram Yadav how he had managed to keep his sanity
only to learn that his father had never seen the boy's damaged eyes.
They had been bandaged before he could have a look.
Dr Agarwal immediately
went to operate and tried to reconstruct part of the lower eyelid to
help support the eye.
Skin was grafted
from the cheek to build the lower eyelid.
Three weeks after
the incident, Dhanvir was still in shock. He did not respond to Dr Agarwal's
questions.
While operating
on him under local anesthesia, Dr Agarwal had one of her assistants
talk to him and found that whenever a
mention of the grisly incident was made his blood pressure and heart
rate would drop significantly.
"It must have
been very painful when they cut out his eyes. I can't imagine how he
lived for three weeks with his right eye hanging out like that,"
shudders Dr Agarwal.
Dhanvir has already
been through two operations on his right eye and one on his left eye.
Because there is no eyeball in the right eye, the eye tends to shrivel
and shrink. To prevent that, a prosthesis has been inserted.
Reconstructive surgery
will cost anywhere between Rs 10 lakhs (Rs 1 million) and Rs 20 lakhs
(Rs 2 million). If all goes well, Dhanvir will be able to someday get
artificial eyes that look like real ones.
But with the optic
nerves cut, he can never hope to see again.
"There is no
muscle movement at all in his eyes. Even if you are blind in most cases
you can blink or move your eyes. Dhanvir can't even do that. If even
part of the muscle movement comes back we can insert artificial eyes,"
says Dr Agarwal.
Though no police
complaint has still been filed, Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi has
ordered an enquiry into the incident.
Ashok Singh, the
sarpanch, is absconding.
Dhanvir's family
in Bihar is running up debts since its sole earning member, Sriram Yadav,
is currently with him in Bangalore.
"In the village
they are borrowing a little money from here and there for food till
I get back. Once I go back, I will work and repay the debts," says
Sriram Yadav.
As for Dhanvir,
the cowherd who never knew a world beyond the boundaries of his village,
this is the farthest he has ever traveled. But it is a world he cannot
see or comprehend.
He says he wants
to return to grazing buffaloes and feeding them grass.
But with no vision,
it is a life he can never go back to. And that is only now slowly dawning
on him.
Talking about what
the future holds, his face turns stony and he swallows hard.
Dhanvir doesn't
even have tears left to shed.
If you want to help
Dhanvir Yadav, send in your contributions to
Dhanvir Yadav
C/o Dr Sunita Agarwal
Agarwal Eye Hospital
15, Eagle Street
Bangalore 560025
Dr Sunita Agarwal can also be mailed on
[email protected] with the subject line: Dhanvir Yadav.