WUNRN
INDIA - DELHI GANG-RAPE VICTIMS DIES
IN SINGAPORE HOSPITAL
A female student gang-raped on a bus in
India's capital Delhi has died at a Singapore hospital, doctors say.
"The
patient passed away peacefully at 4:45am on 29 Dec 2012," a statement from
the hospital said. The patient's family had been by her side, it added.
The
23-year-old had arrived in Singapore on Thursday after undergoing three
operations in a Delhi hospital.
The attack
earlier this month triggered violent public protests in India that left one
police officer dead.
Six men have
been arrested and two police officers have been suspended following the 16
December attack.
"The
patient had remained in an extremely critical condition since admission to
Mount Elizabeth Hospital," a statement from hospital chief executive
Kelvin Loh said.
"She
had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body
and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the
odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," the
statement went on.
"We are
humbled by the privilege of being tasked to care for her in her final
struggle," Mr Loh said.
A team of
eight specialists had tried to keep the patient stable, but her condition
continued to deteriorate over the two days she was at Mount Elizabeth Hospital,
he added.
Officials
from the High Commission of India had also been present when the patient passed
away. The Indian home minister said the government had decided to send the
victim overseas on the recommendation of her doctors.
Rising
Anger
The victim
and her friend had been to see a film when they boarded the bus in the Munirka
area of Delhi, intending to travel to Dwarka in the south-west of the city.
Police said
she was raped for nearly an hour, and both she and her companion were beaten
with iron bars and thrown out of the moving bus and into the street.
On arrival
at the hospital in Singapore, doctors said that as well as a "prior
cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen, as well as
significant brain injury".
The
government has tried to halt rising public anger by announcing a series of
measures intended to make Delhi safer for women.
These
include more police night patrols, checks on bus drivers and their assistants,
and the banning of buses with tinted windows or curtains.
The government
has also said that it will post the photos, names and addresses of convicted
rapists on official websites to shame them.
It has set
up two committees - one looking into speeding up trials of cases involving
sexual assaults on women, and the other to examine the lapses that might have
led to the incident in Delhi.
But the
protesters say the government's pledge to seek life sentences for the attackers
is not enough - many are calling for the death penalty.
_______________________________________________________________
----- Original Message -----
From: WUNRN
ListServe
To: WUNRN ListServe
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2012 2:59 PM
Subject: India - Outrage Over Delhi Gang Rape Swells
WUNRN
“You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of
its women.”
– Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
Aljazeera Article on India Gang Rape
of Woman Medical Student on Bus & VIDEO of Violent Protests in Delhi.
________________________________________________________________
INDIA - OUTRAGE OVER DELHI GANG RAPE
SWELLS
AFP | 20th December, 2012
Indian students and activists shout
slogans as they carry torches at India Gate during a protest following the gang-rape
of a student in
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joined
his ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi in condemning Sunday night’s
“heinous” assault by six drunken man who were joyriding on a bus when they
picked up the woman and a male companion.
After taking turns to rape the woman, the
attackers then threw the pair off the vehicle.
Four people, including the bus driver, have
so far been arrested, while a hunt is ongoing for two other suspects.
As the government tried to address the
anger with series of steps, protests spread to other major cities including
Mumbai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Police used water cannon on one group of
demonstrators as they tried to tear down steel barricades outside the official
residence of
Before the violence broke out, protesters
carrying banners chanted: “We want equal rights for women.”
“Women don’t feel safe in the city, this is
appalling,” said 18-year-old student protester Jayesha Koushik.
“The blame is always put on the women. ‘She
was not wearing the right dress, she was out at the wrong time, she must have
provoked it’. How can you blame the women for rape?”
“Rapes are happening to teach women a
lesson,” said Kavita Krishnan of the All India Progressive Women’s Association
who was among the protesters.
Even Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan
weighed in by calling on his Facebook page for “every Indian (to) become a
vigilante, a soldier, a commander” to “fight such heinous crimes with strength
and conviction”.
National crime records show that 228,650 of
the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year were aimed against women.
Rape cases in
“It’s a heinous crime. It is very
upsetting,” Prime Minister Singh told a parliamentary delegation which met him
to discuss the latest attack.
Singh said he had asked Home Minister
Sushilkumar Shinde to “ensure that (the) culprits are brought to justice and
such cases do not recur”, according to the Press Trust of India.
Shinde announced in parliament that there
would be a crackdown on buses having tinted glass and heavy curtains — measures
that should already be in force.
Congress’s Gandhi who is
“Such violence and criminality needs not
only to be condemned, it calls for a concerted effort to fight it,” Gandhi said
in a letter to Dikshit.
Hospital doctors have been shocked by the
extent of the rape victims’ injuries. “They cannot be described in words”, a
surgeon who did not want to be named told AFP.
The rape took place over a period of more
than 40 minutes on Sunday in a bus which had stopped to pick up the two victims
who had spent the evening at a cinema.
“They began molesting the girl and her
companion bravely fought back trying to save her but these men attacked him
with an iron rod,” police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said on Tuesday.
“The victim was dragged to the rear of the
bus and brutally beaten and raped.”
Three of the suspects appeared before a
city magistrate on Wednesday where a police request for a custody extension was
granted.
Kumar demanded the death penalty for people
convicted of rape, a crime that currently carries a maximum punishment of 10
years in prison.