One more accused has been arrested in connection with the Delhi gang rape case. He was detained along with another person in Uttar Pradesh last night.
A 23-year-old woman was gang raped for almost an hour on a moving bus and then thrown semi-naked on the road to die Last Sunday in New Delhi, at around 9.30 p.m.,
The brutal rape took place when the woman, and her accompanying male friend, boarded a bus to head home after watching a movie at a south Delhi cinema. The duo were allegedly attacked by at least six men who were in the otherwise empty bus. According to reports, the duo were overpowered and the woman was then beaten with iron rods, stripped and gang-raped -- all while the bus was running on one of the city's busiest roads which also has police checkpoints. The duo were then thrown off the bus by the roadside and soon discovered by a passing police unit which rushed them to hospital. While the man is wounded but out of danger, the woman –- a student of physiotherapy -- has severe internal organ damage and is said to be battling for her life.
The rape sparked protests in the capital and outrage in Parliament, with several politicians demanding capital punishment for the perpetrators. The police have arrested four of the accused, and the trial, Indian Home Minister Sushil Shinde said will be fast-tracked. “The incident has raised the issue of declining public confidence in the law and order machinery in the city,” a National Human Rights Commission statement said, “… Especially, in its capacity to ensure safety of women as a number of such incidents have been reported in the national capital in the recent past.”
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| Indian women protest outside police headquarters in New Delhi on Dec. 19, 2012. |
The incident has reinitiated debate over the death penalty, which though legal, is rarely carried out in India.
“We will seek the most severe punishment of life imprisonment for the culprits and we will send a proposal to the government for the death sentence for rapists,” New Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar told reporters. According to Indian law, rape currently carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison, while the death penalty is restricted to rare cases of murder and “waging war against the country.”
With social media abuzz, celebrities tweeted their views on the incident.
“On this public platform I dare not even attempt to mention the details of the rape case... even an animal would not behave so...” tweeted Amitabh Bachchan to his four million-plus Twitter followers, “The fear of system, of order, of conduct guided by justice, is fast disappearing. Is this the freedom that our elders fought for?,” he added.
“This is not the Delhi I grew up in... as politics degenerates, so do the streets. One reflective of the other. All sense of decency gone...” tweeted director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth). “If something deep in society has to change, it has to cut across divisions such as police, politicians and the rest of us. We all have to change. Every social and professional community needs to ask, what can we do to change attitudes towards women? That includes media,” he wrote.
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