India – Juvenile Convicted in Delhi Gang-Rape Case Released from Prison – Parents of Young Woman Who Died & Thousands Protest

INDIA – JUVENILE CONVICTED IN DELHI GANG-RAPE CASE RELEASED FROM PRISON – PARENTS OF YOUNG WOMAN WHO DIED & THOUSANDS PROTEST

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BREAKING NEWS – December 20, 2015 AP: On Friday, the Delhi High Court rejected a petition to extend the man’s term, saying that he has served the maximum sentence under the law. India’s top court is set to hear another such petition Monday. News reports said the convict was moved Sunday from the reform home where he had been kept to a new home under the care of a children’s rights group. Phone calls to the police went unanswered. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/hundreds-in-india-protest-release-of-gang-rape-convict/

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INDIA – JUVENILE CONVICTED IN DELHI GANG-RAPE CASE TO BE RELEASED FROM PRISON – PARENTS OF YOUNG WOMAN WHO DIED & THOUSANDS PROTEST

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/18/asia/india-new-delhi-gang-rape-juvenile-convict/

Website Link Includes Video (Excuse Commercial).

By Moni Basu & Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN

December 18, 2015 – New Delhi (CNN)Outside the Delhi High Court on Friday, there were few clues that a momentous decision was underway in India’s watershed gang rape case. Besides a small band of lawyers and journalists, few were present when the court ruled that come Sunday, the youngest of six men who tortured and raped a physiotherapy student on a moving Delhi bus would be a free man.

He had participated in the most heinous of acts but because he was just shy of his 18th birthday on the night of the rape, he served only three years in custody, a sentence that many felt amounted to a severe miscarriage of justice.

And yet, there were not the thousands of protesters who gathered on the streets of the Indian capital after horrific details of the rape came to light. Nor was there the anger expressed outside this very court in September 2013 at the sentencing of the other convicted rapists. On that hot day, Indians had demanded “fansi,” death by hanging.

But in the cool breeze of this December day, the outrage that sprouted from this case seemed a memory. The only expression of disappointment came from the victim’s parents and the lawyers who had fought to defer release.

The victim’s mother, Asha Singh, had promised her daughter she would fight for her but on Friday, she said she had failed.

“Crime has won. We have lost,” Singh said. “Our efforts for three years have failed.”

India’s juvenile justice laws were drafted with the best of intentions and aimed at reform for minors. A minor’s maximum punishment is three years in custody.

In the aftermath of the gang rape, a bill introduced in parliament sought to amend the law to make exceptions for heinous crimes. But that bill was tabled in the upper house.

Indian law enforcement and lawmakers had asked for continued custody of the minor, who has been held at an institution for juvenile reform. But the high court could not find legal ground on which to issue a stay.

“The court is no doubt concerned by what has happened and the seriousness of the offense, but the court is also helpless because they have to stay within the confines of the act and the rules and the law,” said Anil Soni, a government lawyer.

Three years was a sentence that seemed vastly disproportionate given the heinous nature of the rape. Of the other five rapists, one died in prison and the other four received death sentences.

Their crime was unimaginably brutal. On the night of December 16, 2012, the victim and a male friend boarded a bus to make their way home from a south Delhi movie theater, not far from the high court complex. They were attacked by the six men and left on the side of the road to die.

The woman was found with her intestines pulled out of her body. She was dubbed “Nirbhaya,” one without fear, as she struggled for survival, first in Delhi and then in a hospital in Singapore. She died of her injuries 13 days later.

On Wednesday, people gathered at a third anniversary commemoration in Delhi and listened to Singh name her daughter publicly for the first time — Jyoti Singh. By law, rape victims are not ever named publicly in India.

“Why should I hide her name? Why should I be ashamed of it?” Asha Singh said. “Those who committed that heinous crime on her should feel ashamed. The makers of this administrative system should feel ashamed.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20860569

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.

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“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.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/12/2012122271026583563.html

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https://dawn.com/2012/12/20/outrage-over-delhi-gang-rape-swells-across-india-2/

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 New Delhi, Dec 19, 2012. — Photo by AFP

NEW DELHI: Riot police fired water cannon Wednesday at a protest in New Delhi over the gang-rape of a 23-year-old student who was left fighting for her life as outrage against the brutal attack grew across India.

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 Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit.

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 India more than doubled between 1990 and 2008. Sunday night’s case was the latest in a series of particularly brutal attacks in the capital.

“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 India’s most powerful politician, described the attack as a source of shame for the capital after she paid a visit Tuesday to the hospital where the brutalised victim is being treated.

“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.