'It's no less than a miracle'

Thu, Jul 24 01:40 AM

"From down here, it looked as if she willingly jumped from the open window on the tenth floor. Then something made her cling to a cable hanging from the terrace," said Sanjay, a private company employee who saw 23-year-old Shalini fall from a commercial building in east Delhi on Tuesday.

Shalini survived the fall. The neat depression in the garden outside Roots Building in Laxmi Nagar District Centre makes it easy to locate where she fell.

"She fell right here and she was unconscious. She wasn't bleeding.

I thought she had died," said Sanjay, who was out for lunch when Shalini fell with a thud a few metres ahead of him. Shalini regained consciousness at Lal Bahadur Hospital by evening and was later discharged.

Her medical report stated she had bruises on her palms and legs, injuries on shoulders and a sprained ankle, doctors said. "It's no less than a miracle.

It depends on how you fall. The chances of your survival increase if the body weight doesn't affect the lower limb or the spine.

She must have fallen with all the weight on her ankle and that's why she ended with a twisted ankle," said P.K. Dave, HoD Orthopedics at Rockland Hospital. Shalini, a Citibank employee, told the police that she was upset and she fell from the open window.

Her father is a car driver and the family lives in a quarter in a government bungalow in Lodhi Estate. Her mother Krishna told this correspondent that Shalini was doing fine but the skin on her palm had been scrapped off in the incident.

Eyewitnesses said Shalini's sandals were lying next to the window when bystanders rushed to the top floor. She seems to have realised the implication of jumping off like that and that is why she held on to the cable while falling.

Psychiatrist Jitendra Nagpal of VIMHANS said, "The act is an attempt to seek attention so that he or she is understood better. Some people tend to withdraw (from ending their life) at the last minute as a moment of rationality sparks some amount of sensibility.

" A source on Tuesday had said the police found a suicide note from her purse but officially they didn't confirm it. She was identified with the help of her identity card in her purse.

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