Bangalore: Over a month after a brutal attack inside an ATM in Bangalore left her right side paralysed, skull fractured and most of her nose chopped off, Jothi Uday, a bank manager, is ready to go home from hospital. Doctors say it will take her at least three months to recover fully but the “brave patient” is now able to walk on her own.
The attacker who hit Jothi repeatedly with machete is still at large despite four minutes of the CCTV footage that captured him striking the 44-year-old on her skull. The delay worries Jothi, who wants him nabbed soonest. (Bangalore: ATM attacker still not caught, police puts up his pictures at public places)
“The police could have swung into action earlier. The more the delay, the lesser are chances to nab him. Even the traffic police on that day could have been more alert as to why the shutter of an ATM was shut for more than three hours when it should have been open,” an emotional Jothi tells.
Recollecting the incident, she narrates, “I had a morning shift on November 19. That is the ATM I usually go to. I was perplexed as a man came in and downed the shutter. For a moment I thought he was there to load cash. He said “don’t scream, or I will kill you”. I was not scared then. I told him I was withdrawing money for my daughter’s fees. Within a minute he caught me by my neck and hit me hard with the sickle several times and then I fell unconscious. He left the ATM and I lay there bleeding for three hours,” she said.
“It was a very agonising time for me. I want to thank my bank for all the help, the doctors and those two people who put me in an auto rickshaw and brought to me to hospital,” she added.
Doctors say Jothi has been a “remarkably brave patient” who followed all instructions and “was in a hurry to get better”.
There was no security guard at the ATM booth that Jothi visited at around 7 am on November 19. After her attacker left her bleeding, she lay undiscovered for three hours inside the ATM located on one of Bangalore’s busiest roads. Finally, some schoolboys noticed blood trickling onto the road and informed the traffic police.
