Youngest 26/11 survivor finally gets a house
Mumbai: Over five years after she first moved the Bombay High Court to intervene and ensure the state gives her a house, Devika Rotawan, the youngest victim of the 26/11 terror attacks and a prosecution witness, was allotted a Mhada house and will soon be moving in.
Rotawan, now 25, was a first year BA student at Chetna College in Bandra when she moved the HC. She was barely 10 when the three-day terror siege by 10 terrorists from Pakistan took place inNov 2008. She was a key eyewitness during the trial. "My father taught us that even if you meet 100 people and 99 of them are bad, if one is good, follow that one. He's the one who encouraged me to testify,'' she told the TOI, on Wednesday, adding that she is yet to fully move into the newly allotted home.
She said she had received the house keys in March.
"But we're overjoyed. For the first time, we feel like we'll have a stable place to call home." "Some minor work is still left — just electrical fittings and installing a fan," she said of the flat she has been allotted in Andheri, suburban Mumbai. On her plea first argued by Delhi-based advocate Utsav Bains in 2020, the HC had in 2020 asked the state to consider the request for a house under its economically weaker section (EWS) scheme and to provide for her higher education.
She aspired to join the Indian Police Service (IPS), she said.
"My dream of becoming an IPS officer had to be set aside, but my goal is still to serve the nation in whatever way I can." Rotawan's experience post-attack, she said, has been marked by displacement, uncertainty. "Most landlords didn't want to rent to us after they heard about our connection to the case."
Despite surviving the attack, the emotional impact still stays with her. "Even now, a part of me is always anxious that something like that could happen again," she said. "But I've learned that you can't let fear hold you back — if I had, I would've never moved forward."
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