NEW DELHI: A judge Friday sentenced to death the four men convicted in the December gang rape and murder of a young New Delhi woman, ordering them to the gallows for a brutal attack on a moving bus that left the young woman with such severe internal injuries that she died two weeks later.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Yogesh Khanna said that “courts cannot turn a blind eye” to such crimes, saying the attack “shocked the collective conscience” of India.
One of the four, 20-year-old Vinay Sharma, broke down as the sentence was read, his wail filling the tiny courtroom. Sharma was an assistant at a gym and the only one of the attackers to graduate from high school.
The sentence must be confirmed by India’s High Court. The men can appeal their case to the Supreme Court, and ask the president for clemency.
The victim’s family, along with numerous politicians and government officials, had long called for the men to be executed.
“I am very happy our girl has got justice,” said the victim’s father, who cannot be named under Indian laws guarding his daughter’s identity as a rape victim. The case has been closely followed across India, seen as a reflection on rampant mistreatment of women and the government’s inability to deal with crime.
]]>NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Angry crowds demonstrated in New Delhi on Saturday after a five-year-old girl was allegedly raped, tortured and kept in captivity for 40 hours, reviving memories of last December’s brutal assault on a woman that shook the country.
Police arrested a man they accuse of the attack from Bihar, and brought him back to New Delhi for interrogation. Doctors say the girl suffered severe injuries and bruising, including to her neck and genitalia.
In pictures: Rape of 5-year-old sparks protests in Delhi reut.rs/17A3p9F
Protests that began on Friday grew more intense after video footage showed a policeman slapping a woman protester, and following reports that investigators had offered the victim’s family 2,000 rupees not to file a case.
It was the second case of alleged rape in 48 hours to trigger protests and heavy-handed policing, after hundreds of people fought police in the city of Aligarh, 135 km (83 miles) from Delhi on Thursday. One policeman was filmed hitting an old woman hard with a club in the protest.
Public fury over the latest attack in the capital echoed the response to the gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus on December 16 in New Delhi, which brought thousands of people onto the streets in protest and clashes with police.
The woman died of her injuries in a Singapore hospital.
The gang rape provoked rare national debate about violence against women, putting the issue onto the political agenda in the nation of 1.2 billion people a year before elections.
On Saturday, about 1,000 people gathered to demonstrate outside the police headquarters in New Delhi, where several people tried to break through metal barricades. Smaller protests erupted outside the state-run hospital where the girl was being treated, the home of ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, and the residence of the country’s interior minister.
The girl was “conscious and alert” and her condition stable, but her injuries are infected and so severe she may need corrective surgery, an official of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital told reporters.
Police identified the accused as a 22-year-old, who they said had fled the capital after leaving the girl for dead in an apartment of the same building where her family lives.
The accused was a temporary worker in garment factories and lived with his father, a juice seller, police said. TV news channels reported that some people tried to attack the man and others threw shoes at him as police led him through Patna airport in Bihar state to board a plane back to New Delhi.
Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat declined to comment on reports that the girl’s family had been offered money not to file a case, adding he would only do so after an investigation.
Interior minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said the government was conducting an inquiry into allegations of police negligence.
CRITICS SAY TOUGHER LAWS NOT ENOUGH
The girl, whose parents work as labourers and live in a slum in the outskirts of Delhi, went missing from her home on April 15, according to Manish Sisodia, an official of the Aam Aadmi Party, which organised a protest on Friday. Local media said she was found by neighbours who heard her crying two days later.
B.N. Bansal, a doctor from the Swami Dayanand Hospital, where the girl was initially admitted, said on Friday that she had undergone an operation due to severe injuries.
“We found candles and an oil bottle from inside the child when we operated upon her,” Bansal told reporters. “The next 48 hours will be crucial for her.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office said in a statement that he was deeply disturbed by the latest incident. In December his administration had faced criticism for failing to respond quickly to the horrific attack on the physiotherapy student.
The unprecedented protests by thousands of people across India eventually forced Singh’s government to pass tougher laws to fight gender crimes in March.
New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India’s major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.
However, most sex crimes in India go unreported, many offenders go unpunished, and the wheels of justice turn slowly, according to social activists who say successive governments have done little to ensure the safety of women and children.
Activists said the new laws are not enough to deter sex offenders in India’s largely patriarchal societies.
“You need community policing to stop these crimes,” activist Kiran Bedi told an Indian TV channel.
The U.N.’s child rights arm, UNICEF, said that tougher laws are no use if they are not enforced effectively.
“The brutal rape case this week unfortunately also indicates the need to strongly improve the response of law enforcement officers,” it said in a statement.
(Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
NEW DELHI: Police said a man on trial for the gang rape and fatal beating of a woman aboard a New Delhi bus committed suicide in an Indian jail Monday, but his lawyer and family allege he was killed.
Ram Singh, who was accused of driving the bus on which the 23-year-old student was raped by a group of six men in December, was under suicide watch at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail when he hanged himself with his own clothes at about 5:30 a.m., police officials said. His death is raising further questions about a criminal justice system already being criticized for failing to protect the nation’s women.
Singh, 33, had been among five defendants facing the death penalty if convicted of the attack, which horrified Indians and set off national protests. A sixth accused is being tried and jailed separately because he is a juvenile.
India’s deputy home minister, R.P.N. Singh, said an inquiry had been ordered into the suicide, according to the Press Trust of India.
“The inquiry is being conducted and it would be premature to make any statement about the details of the incident,” said Vimla Mehra, the director general of the jail.
Ram Singh’s family and lawyer alleged foul play in his death.
“There were no circumstances which could have led to Ram Singh committing suicide. There was no mental stress. He was very happy,” his lawyer V.K. Anand said. Lawyers for the defendants had previously accused police of beating confessions out of the men.
Indian jails have a reputation for overcrowding, poor management and brutal treatment of inmates.
Ram Singh’s father, Mangelal Singh, said his son had been raped in prison by other inmates and had been repeatedly threatened by inmates and guards. Nevertheless, he said he visited his son four days ago and the man appeared fine and gave no hint of any despair that could drive him to take his own life.
Ram Singh also had a badly injured hand and would have been unable to hang himself, his father said, speaking from outside his small home in a New Delhi slum.
“Somebody has killed him,” he said, insisting he would push for a top-level investigation into the death.
Mangelal Singh said he feared for the safety of another son who is also on trial in the rape case.
The defendants were being housed in separate buildings on the jail grounds and were all under suicide watch, a jail official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The rape victim and a male friend were attacked after boarding the bus Dec. 16 as they tried to return home after watching a movie, police say. The six men, the only occupants of the private bus, beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries to her, police say. The victims were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died from her injuries two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
The brutal attack set off nationwide protests about India’s treatment of women and spurred the government to hurry through a new package of laws to protect them.
Singh’s death comes as the trial was deep underway, with another hearing scheduled for Monday. The four surviving defendants were produced in court, but left after a short time because of an attorney’s strike.
Vivek Sharma, a lawyer representing another defendant, said he planned to ask the court to provide greater protection for his client.
]]>The brutal rape of the 23-year-old student last month set off protests in New Delhi and sparked a national debate about the treatment of women across the country and the inability of law enforcement to protect them.
In an effort to address some of that criticism, the government set up five fast-track courts in the capital in recent weeks to deal swiftly with crimes against women. Authorities were eager to move the case into one of those courts, which are designed to avoid the delays, incompetence and corruption that plague much of India’s legal system.
Magistrate Namrita Aggarwal dealt with several procedural issues during a session Thursday morning, and then reconvened the court in the afternoon for a second session at which she ordered the transfer to a fast-track court. The first hearing is to be held there on Monday.
A sixth suspect in the attack claims to be a juvenile and his case is being handled separately.
Lawyers for the five have said police mistreated their clients, including beating them to force them to confess to the Dec. 16 crime.
V.K. Anand, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said Thursday that he would petition the Supreme Court to have the rape trial moved out of New Delhi because he doesn’t believe his client could get a fair hearing in the capital.
Police say the victim and a male friend were heading home from an evening movie when they boarded a bus, where they were attacked by the six assailants. The attackers beat the man and took turns raping the woman and penetrated her repeatedly with a metal bar, causing massive internal injuries, police said. During the attack, the bus drove through a series of police checkpoints without incident, police said.
The victims were eventually dumped on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
The attack focused attention on the little-discussed issue of sexual violence in a country where women are still often regarded as second-class citizens. Victims are often blamed for sexual attacks — by their families or authorities — and the shame of rape keeps many women from reporting such attacks.
Since the gang rape, though, sexual violence has become front-page news nearly every day across the country, with demands that the government do more to protect women and prosecute those that attack them. The government has established several committees to look into how such a horrific attack could occur and recommend changes in the law.