Writer Mod Date & Time PARTITION: Tape 31 * 255MODEM 255MODEM Jan 18 13:13 TAPE 31 Khorshed ITALIA (nee Mehta) interviewed at her home in central Delhi, 18 January 1997 [she asked that her maiden name of KHORSHED MEHTA be used on air] Ms Mehta worked for two months in the summer of 1947 as a voluntary welfare worker with displaced women in Delhi; she's a Parsee, born 1922, and has lived in her present second-floor flat in Connaught Place, almost without a break, since 1937; she was living there at the time of partition Side A 19 - born 8 Aug 1922 13 - used to be 'honorary worker' in Hardinge hospital; all asked 'to go to the Old Fort and help the women that will be coming in the refugee trains or by trucks ...' 25 - shops started being looted, 'all the Muslim shops ... just take everything in a tonga and run; 'Nehru came himself over here ... he came and ran with a lathi trying to hit these chowkra boys ... I saw N by my own eyes from my balcony, running ... then the police men came ... N running to control them, stop all this, stop all this, .•• bas karo, bas karo ... he had a lathi in his hand' 50 - 'many shops were looted, many ... many used to catch the material, overload the tonga and run ... how they looted it' 57 - 'a road from here, where we go to ND station, that road was nothing but full of dead bodies, horses killed, people killed, and I had to cross from Hardinge to that road, ah, I sd I am not crssing road, they sd you'll have to do it, I got hold of somebody ... and we managed to cross and we went to Old Fort' 66 - 'first a truck came with all women, old, young, middle aged, and ... whoever used to come they sued to give us a rpt, their wife is missing, their mother is missing, their sister is missing, ... each time the women came, we had to ask, who do you belong to, what is yr name, ... and then the lady doctors used to examine them, whether they were raped' 80 - [not sure of exact date] 'it was a summer month ... May, June ... when it started' 95 - story of local M deserting his petrol pump; 'so many people became rich oevrnight, overnight; I'll give you this, and send me out from here ...' 110 - 'we had made camps for every women, and we divided the widow, the old, the young, ... mother and dau put together, dau in law put in one camp; there were young girls, 16, 17, you felt so bad, tyhen we had to give a cert that they had been raped or not raped, .... we used to give injections and just have the aborted, and some were in advanced stages ... '