Lakhi was 10 years old when she was trafficked and was sold in Delhi by a local trafficker. After working in adverse conditions for 2 years as domestic help one day she found an opportunity to escape from the house. However, having no idea about the place she landed up in a hospital as a cleaner. Her misfortune did not leave her and one day she fell from the rooftop of the hospital while drying the clothes and broke her spinal cord. The hospital people gave her the treatment and send her back to her village in Jharkhand after putting a rod in her body to support the spinal cord. All this has happened about 8 years back from now. Her misfortune did not leave her even then. In 2017, the rod that was supporting her came out of her body halfway through, tearing her back. If that was not enough, she became an orphan losing both her parents. Now she was a minor, an orphan, having a rod hanging out of her back, spinal cord getting deformed every day, having no property, no livelihood to take take care of her life. She was completely leaving on alms she received from the community members. She belongs to a deprived scheduled caste group. Now she is 20 years old, gets some job for breaking stone chips for road works, she also sells country liquor for her livelihood. Recently, Self Help Groups of her locality decided to help her and showed her to a government doctor. The doctor said that she is losing important fluid from her spinal cord very fast and every day her spinal cord is bending towards outside. He said that she cannot be operated in Jharkhand as the proper types of machinery are not available and chances are there that she might get paralysed if teh rod is removed. She has been referred to JP Narayan Apex Trauma Centre, AIIMS, New Delhi for her surgery.
Her medical reports have also been shared with Sarvodaya Hospital, Faridabad, where the experts were confident to treat her completely as they have handled many such cases earlier too. However, Sarvodaya is a corporate hospital and the kind of surgery she needs would be a little costly as it would be time-consuming as well as it would require a Titanium rod which is costly mettle.
As a society, we have failed to protect a child from getting traffic, let's not fail again in returning her youth to her.