Sharmila decides to stay away from home, mother

KOLKATA: Even after her release from detention, rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila has decided to keep her vow of neither entering her house nor meeting her mother till the government repeals AFSPA.

Sharmila, 42, is now continuing her 14-year-old fast from a small makeshift shelter outside the government-run Jawahar Lal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences and Hospital in Imphal where she was forced fed through nose under police detention.

Her house where her mother and brother stay is only a few meters away from the hospital.

“But Sharmila has decided not to go to the house nor meet her mother till her demands of repealing the ‘draconian’ Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is met by the government,” Sharmila’s brother Irom Singhajit told PTI from Imphal.

Sharmila has, however, been meeting her elder brother ever since she walked out of the hospital-turned-prison yesterday after a local court absolved her of the charge of attempt to commit suicide by means of fasting.

“My mother has said that let her continue the fast and I will meet her only when her mission is accomplished,” Singhajit said.

After Sharmila began her fast on November 5, 2000, she had declared that she would not see her mother during the fasting period to avoid any emotional outbursts.

Since then, the duo had seen each other only once when her mother Shakhi Devi, in her eighties, was also admitted to the same hospital in 2009.

“I don’t want her to be weak in this fight. She needs continuous courage to go on,” Shakhi had told PTI earlier. –PTI