Woman gang-raped in moving bus in Delhi,
main accused arrested
The Crime
A 23-year-old physiotherapy student is raped in a moving bus on a Sunday night in Delhi. She was beaten with an iron rod and her intestine ripped off. Doctors say they had never seen 'such brutality'.
Late Monday, police arrested the main accused in the Capital's latest rape case even as the victim struggled for her life — with attending doctors claiming they had never seen a victim of sexual assault subjected to "such brutality".
The 23-year-old had been raped in a moving bus by four people for about 25 minutes on Sunday night, and doctors who attended on her said she seemed to have been beaten with a blunt object and sustained injuries to the stomach and intestine.
said a senior doctor at Safdurjung Hospital where the victim was admitted. The accused, identified as Ram Singh, 30, was driving the bus which he uses to ferry students of a prominent school in Pushp Vihar as well as Noida.
Police also arrested Mukesh, who was an accomplice.
Chhaya Sharma, deputy commissioner of police (south) said seven people had been detained for questioning. The victim, a physiotherapist from Uttam Nagar and her friend, a 28-year-old software engineer, had gone to the Select Citywalk mall in Saket to catch a movie.
By the time the show was over, it was past 8pm and the couple took an autorickshaw to the DDA Munirka bus stop on Outer Ring Road. After waiting for more than half an hour, the two decided to board a luxury bus en route Dwarka and Palam Village. No sooner than they boarded the bus that one of the seven occupants made a lewd comment.
The victim, in the meantime, was forced into the driver's cabin, where the men took turns to rape her. The bus, meanwhile, circled the Mahipalpur flyover thrice before dumping them.
Later, the girl and the boy were thrown out at a toll plaza on NH8 near the Mahipalpur flyover. A highway patrol team discovered the unconscious couple bereft of clothing at 10.15pm. They were eventually taken to Safdarjung Hospital by police.
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Gang-rape victim tragedy
'a tipping point' for India
The Outrage
The barbaric crime sparks nationwide protests. In Delhi, protesters promise the gang-rape victim would serve as a 'tipping point' in the struggle to end a culture of violence against women in India.
They may never know her name, but the protesters were determined that the gangrape victim would serve as a "tipping point" in the battle to end a culture of violence against women in the country.
said Anjali Raval, a housewife who took part in a rally in the centre of Delhi on Saturday.
"But this case has acted like a pressure cooker blast effect," added the 35-year-old. "It is high time we woke up and fought for women's safety." While police turned much of downtown Delhi into a no-go area on Saturday in the aftermath of the young student's death in Singapore, authorities did allow a small protest to take place in Jantar Mantar, a traditional rallying point.
Women and men took part in the show of solidarity for the unnamed woman whose ordeal on a bus at the hands of a gang of rapists two weekends ago triggered an outpouring of pent-up anger and despair. New Delhi has been dubbed the "rape capital" of the country, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.
Gangrapes are so frequent that they are barely mentioned in the newspapers while victims are often deterred from reporting attacks for fear of shaming their families or that they will receive the brush-off from police. But Bela Rana, a Delhi-based lawyer, said that the wave of protests that followed the assault on December 16 represented a sea change and that women were no longer prepared to suffer in silence.
"Yes we are aware that this is not the first case, nor will it be the last case of gangrape in India, but it is clear that we will not tolerate sex crimes anymore," said Rana. Although the victim has not been named, she is known to have been a medical student who had spent the evening watching The Life of Pi at a mall in southern Delhi before she was picked up by the six rapists who would later kill her.
In a blog widely circulated on social media on Saturday, the author Nilanjana Roy said the tragedy had touched so many people as she was "one just like us". "The one whose battered body stood for all the anonymous women in this country whose rapes and deaths are a footnote in the left-hand column of the newspaper," she wrote.
"Sometimes, an atrocity bites so deep that we have no armour against it, and that was what happened with the 23-year-old medical student, the one who left a cinema hall and boarded the wrong bus, whose intestines were so badly damaged that the injuries listed on the FIR (medical) report made hardened doctors, and then the capital city, cry for her pain."
Aakar Kamath, a college professor who was among the men at the protest, said it was high time a deep-rooted hatred of women had to be eradicated. "Yes, the woman has died but her story will always be remembered as many Indians are now willing to fight against misogyny," he said. Kamath added her death should not be treated as the end of a chapter but rather as a "tipping point" in the struggle to ensure that women can exercise their "right to live without fear".
Issues such as rape, dowry-related deaths and female infanticide have rarely entered mainstream political discourse but the deadly attack has put gender issues centre stage in politics in the country. "Better late than never," said Rana.
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court says 'no mercy'
Judgement & Punishment
Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur will be hanged to death for the gang-rape, rules a court in September 2013. They showed no mercy to the woman and they got no mercy from the law.
Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur will hang, a fast-track court pronounced on Friday, nine months after the four and two others destroyed the life of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi and shook India's conscience.
"Death to all," additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna announced in a packed courtroom around 2.30pm, passing the capital sentence three days after he had held the four guilty of the gang-rape and murder of the 23-year-old a paramedical student.
"The convicts be hanged by neck till they are dead." The judge added, "In these times when crime against women is on the rise, courts cannot turn a blind eye to such (a) barbaric and gruesome crime. There cannot be any tolerance. This crime in every way falls within the rarest of rare category warranting a death sentence."
Gym instructor Vinay Sharma (20), fruit seller Pawan Gupta (19) and bus cleaner Akshay Thakur (28) howled in anguish, while fellow convict Mukesh Singh (26) stood stunned with folded hands. Sharma cried out to the judge, "Sir ji, Sir ji (please sir, please sir)." High drama ensued as defence lawyer AP Singh snapped at the judge and alleged the verdict was politically biased.
"Judge sahab, aapne satyameva jayate ke jagah jhootameva jayate ko uphold kiya, ye political pressure-eva jayate hai, vote bank politics-eva jayate hai (You have not upheld truth but lies. This decision has been taken under political pressure and for vote bank politics)," he said. Singh was defending Sharma and Thakur. The sentence has to be confirmed by Delhi high court.
The young woman's family heaved a sigh of relief after hearing of the death penalty.
"Halak mein saans atki thi, jo ab bahar nikli hai. Mein dhanywaad karti hun desh ke logon ka aur media ka (We were waiting with bated breath, now we are relieved. I thank the people of the country and the media)," her mother said.
The family had expressed dissatisfaction when an underage accomplice of the four convicts, who has since turned 18, was sent to a reform home for three years after a juvenile board handed down a guilty verdict on August 31. The main accused in the case, Ram Singh, was found hanging in his Tihar jail cell on March 11.
The woman's brother said it had been hard to watch the accused "laughing" during the trial. "This is true justice for my sister," he said outside the court in Saket in south Delhi. "It was death they deserved and death they got," said the father of the woman's male friend, who was badly injured during the savage December 16, 2012, attack.
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Men behind the ghastly Delhi gang-rape
Stop-gap measures bound to fail
The Road Ahead
Promises and plans were made that India would become a safer place for women after the gang-rape. A year later, Hindustan Times tracks how many of these promises and targets have been realised.
Those convicted in the December 16 gang rape case had robbed a man before zeroing in on the 23-year-old physiotherapist and her friend as their next target.
Their first victim, Ramadhar, had approached three policemen in the Hauz Khas area to lodge a complaint that he had been robbed in a moving bus. Instead, he was asked to approach the police station in Vasant Vihar instead.
If the police had acted immediately on his complaint, it is possible that the Delhi gang rape convicts wouldn't have been able to zero in on another victim.
The incident just highlights how crimes can be prevented if police on patrolling duty treat each complaint with utmost seriousness. After the gang rape, a lot was promised. But little has changed on the ground as complainants are still turned away from police stations.
Following the incident and the outrage that followed, a drive was launched and buses with tinted glasses were targeted. Police personnel manning pickets were given torches to check the insides of vehicles but a year later, all these measures are a distant memory. Another reason for security loopholes in the capital is the preoccupation of the security forces with VIPs and doing odd jobs.
If the total police workforce was available to the 1.67 crore Delhi residents, the city probably would have had one of the best citizen-police ratios in the country: the strength of the force is over 85,000, which means that one policeman could be made available for 200 citizens.
Some 45,000 Delhi policemen are engaged in doing jobs not related to policing the streets. They assist civic agencies in rounding up stray cattle, verify domestic workers and passport applicants and provide security at VIP weddings and social functions. As a result, there is minimal police presence on roads to act as a psychological deterrent for criminals.
Experts agree that the absence of police emboldens criminals. After the gang rape, a lot was promised. But little has changed on the ground as complainants are still turned away from police stations. Grill session
In an interview, Dipak Mishra, special commissioner of police (law and order), Delhi Police told Hindustan Times that, "We are keeping an eye on routes used by vehicles of BPO companies."
Excerpts:
Delhi has one of the largest police forces in the country with over 85,000 personnel, but cases of street crimes in the city have risen. People blame low visibility of police personnel in vulnerable areas for this. What is your take on it?
It will be unfair to say that our police personnel are not visible. More than 850 PCR vans are patrolling the streets across the city. The number of street crimes has gone up because we have been converting all complaints, made through PCR calls or in writing, to FIRs.
After the December 16 gang rape, Delhi police had made several promises to make women feel safe in the city. But there have been instances where complaints of women were turned away at the police stations.
Why would we turn people away? We have asked station-house officers (SHOs) to register FIRs in complaints related to crimes against women without attempting to make changes in the complaints or discouraging those making the complaints.
What steps are being taken to make Delhi safer for women?
Junior police personnel are being trained to handle cases related to women sensibly. More women personnel are being deployed at police stations. We have also opened women help desks at police. Orders have issued to monitor the routes taken by BPO vehicles.
Stop-gap measures bound to fail
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