A friend of the Indian gang-rape
victim today claimed police waited more than two hours to take her to hospital
despite the appalling injuries she suffered in the attack.
The man, believed to be the only
witness in the case, said the victim was positive and wanted to live even after
the horrific ordeal she had gone through.
But he claimed no-one came to their
aid when they were thrown off the bus where she was assaulted and that even
after the police arrived, it took them over two hours to take them to hospital.
His comments come after her alleged
killers were yesterday kept away from court amid fears of mob violence.
He said since December 16, said:
'Many things have come out in the media, but people have been interpreting it
differently.
'I want to tell them what we faced
on that night. I want to tell what I faced, what my friend faced,' he told Zee
News.
He said six men had lured them into
boarding the bus on the night of December 16.
The occupants of the bus which had tinted windows and curtains had trapped us. They were probably involved in crimes before also.
'They beat us up, hit us with iron
rod, snatched our clothes and belongings and they threw us off the bus on a
deserted stretch.
'From where we boarded bus, they
moved around for nearly two and a half hours. We were shouting, trying to make
people hear us.
'But they switched off the lights.
We tried to resist them. Even my friend fought with them, she tried to save me.
She tried to dial police control room number 100, but the men snatched the
mobile.
'After throwing us off the bus, they
tried to mow us down, but I saved my friend by pulling her away in the nick of
time.
'We were without clothes. We tried
to stop people passing by. Several auto rickshaws, cars and bikes slowed down
but no one stopped for about 25 minutes.
'Then someone on patrol stopped and
called the police,' he told Zee News.
He claimed three police vans arrived
at the scene after about 45 minutes, but wasted time in deciding under which
police station’s jurisdiction the case fell.
He alleged nobody, including the
police, gave them clothes or called an ambulance.
'They were just watching us,' he
said, adding someone gave them a part of bed sheet to cover his friend after
repeated requests.
'My friend was bleeding profusely.
But instead of taking us to a nearby hospital, they (police) took us to a far
away hospital.'
He said he carried his badly injured friend to the PCR van on his own as the policemen didn’t help them because the girl was bleeding profusely.
'Nobody from the public helped us.
People were probably afraid that if they help us they would become witness to
the crime and would be asked to come to police stations and courts,' he told
the channel.
'Even at the hospital we were made
to wait and I had to literally beg for clothes. I borrowed a stranger’s mobile
and called my relatives, but just told them that I met with an accident. My
treatment started only after my relatives came,' he said.
'I was hit on the head. I was not
able to walk. I was not able to move my hands for two weeks,' he said,
detailing the injuries he suffered on that horrific night.
Five people have been formally
charged over the rape and murder of the student paramedic, with one named as
Ram Singh.
It has emerged that a sixth suspect,
who is believed to be a juvenile and is expected to be tried separately, was
the cruellest of all.
According to The Hindustan Times, a police charge sheet reveals in horrendous detail exactly what he is alleged to have done to the unconscious victim - after she had been raped.
The newspaper reported that he
pulled her intestines out with his bare hands and was also responsible for
suggesting that she be thrown naked from the bus.
Yesterday, her father called for the
hanging of those responsible for the attack saying 'the death penalty is
compulsory for a crime so great.'
The trial will be held in a fast
track court and will start on Saturday.
'Of all the persons in the bus, two
had engaged in the most barbarism - Ram Singh, the main accused in the case,
and the juvenile ' said an officer according to the paper.
'Both of them had subjected her to
sexual abuse twice. Singh was the first to rape her followed by the juvenile
and then Akshay. Later, when she lost consciousness, Singh and the juvenile
raped her a second time.'
Authorities are waiting for the
outcome of a bone marrow test before deciding whether the sixth suspect in the
attack will be charged as a juvenile or an adult.
The results of the test, intended to determine the suspect's exact age, are expected to arrive soon.
Police plan to ask for the death
penalty in the case. The men - the bus driver, his brother and four of their
friends - are residents of a south Delhi slum near the site of the attack.
Indian Chief Justice Altamas Kabir
said the accused should be tried swiftly, but cautioned that they needed to be
given a fair trial and not subjected to mob justice.
'Let us not lose sight of the fact
that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty,' he said yesterday,
while inaugurating the new fast-track court.
Criminal lawyer Ajay Digpaul told
India Today: 'In my view, it should not take more than 10-15 effective hearings
to decide the case it as there is plenty of evidence.'
Sanjay Kumar, a lawyer and a member of the Saket District Bar Council said that 2,500 advocates registered at the court had decided to stay away to ensure 'speedy justice'.
'We have decided that no lawyer will
stand up to defend the rape accused as it would be immoral to defend the case,'
he said to AFP.
The government is to set up four
other such courts in the capital to hold timely trials in sexual assault cases,
which often get bogged down for years in India's notoriously sluggish court
system.
Women's activists hope the rape and
killing of the university student on December 16 will mark a turning point in
India's behaviour towards women.
Yesterday the father of the
physiotherapy student paid tribute to his 'fiercely determined' daughter in his
first interview since the attack happened.
In an interview with the BBC the day
after he scattered his daughter's ashes on the sacred waters of the River
Ganges, her father revealed how his daughter wanted to be a doctor and had
promised to lift the family from their poverty.
He said: 'She was very adamant about
whatever she wanted.
'When we used to stop at a sweetshop
on the way to school she was adamant about wanting a sweet and even the
shopkeeper had to relent.
'It was the same in high school. She
wanted to be a doctor and said it was only a matter of a few years and that
when she was a doctor (all our suffering) it will end.'
'I remember asking her once, who are
all your friends? She replied, Dad it's only my books I am friends with.'
Her father moved the family to Delhi
from a rural part of India in order to improve her chances of realising her
ambition of a career in medicine.
The dream was cut short on December
16 when she was attacked by six men after as she caught the bus home after
going to the cinema to watch The Life of Pi. She died from her injuries on
Friday.
Fresh details of the case have
emerged in the Indian press where it is reported that her attackers tried to
throw her under the bus after raping her inside it.
Speaking on the Radio 4 Today
programme this morning, Indira Jaising, the Additional Solicitor General of
India, denied that rape is solely an Indian problem - but admitted that the
conviction rate in the country was low.
She said: 'The problem of rape I've
seen all over the world, it's not a particular India phenomenon.
'What we're complaining about is the
process is too slow, the conviction rate is low.'
She said that all too often it was the victim who was scrutinized and questioned, rather than the accused - and took a swipe at America, recalling the comments of Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who said women's bodies could 'shut down' to prevent a rape.
'You see the blame game, blaming the
witness, finding out did she invite the rape. In the US, they've distinguished
between legitimate rape and rape.
‘Universally there’s a stigma for
bringing a rape case to court. There are families who would discourage their
daughters going to court.’
In a show of solidarity with the
victim, thousands of Indian women and men took part in the biggest
protest yet since they started following the student's death last week.
The protesters carried pro-women
slogans to the Mahatma Gandhi memorial, Rajghat, in New Delhi, yesterday
morning.
The event was organized by the Delhi
Government, Delhi Commission for Women to pay homage to the 23 year old Delhi
gang-rape victim and for women safety.
On Monday Indian police arrested a
man who tried to blow up the house belonging to the driver of a Delhi bus, as
lawyers refuse to defend the accused rapists.
He was found with two homemade bombs
outside the house of bus driver Ram Singh in south Delhi's RK Puram area. Two
other men escaped arrest.
It comes as the Indian government
proposed to name a revised anti-rape law after the victim, a move her family
referred to as an 'honour'.
The father and brother of the girl said that 'if the government names the revised anti-rape law after her, we have no objection and it would be an honour to her'.
The rape victim died at the weekend
after 13-day struggle to survive injuries so severe that the majority of her
intestines had to be removed.
As protests about violence against
women grow louder in India, a 17-year-old school student has come forward to
claim she was sedated and raped by two men in the upscale south Delhi colony of
Safdarjung Enclave on New Year's Eve.
The two men in their late 20s were
arrested and sent to Tihar Jail.
The men, identified as Rajesh and
Naveen Jain, work in IT companies, police said. They were arrested Monday night
and sent to Tihar after they were produced at the Saket court.
The victim had met one of the
accused on a social networking site.
She met the man on Dec 31 at a south
Delhi market and then asked her to accompany him to a flat in Safdarjung Enclave.
There he was joined by his friend, police sources said.
The two are then said to have
sedated her and took turns in raping her. They also warned her of dire
consequences if she revealed anything.
Changes to the government's
mentality appear already to be changing in light of the attack.
Politicians facing sexual assault
charges may now be suspended from office as the country's highest court
prepares to rule on an application to ban regional and national MPs.
As part of that campaign, Chief
Justice Altamas Kabir agreed to hear a petition this week from retired
government administrator Promilla Shanker asking the Supreme Court to suspend
all politicians who are facing prosecution for crimes against women.
She also asked the court to force
the national government to fast-track thousands of rape cases that have
languished in India's notoriously sluggish court system for years.
Six state MPs are facing rape
prosecutions and two national ones are facing charges of crimes against women
that fall short of rape.
In the past five years, political
parties across India nominated 260 candidates awaiting trial on charges of
crimes against women. Parties ran six candidates for the national parliamentary
elections facing such charges.
'We need to decriminalise politics
and surely a serious effort has to be made to stop people who have serious
charges of sexual assault against them from contesting elections," said
Zoya Hasan, a political analyst.
Several thousand women joined a
silent march to Gandhi's memorial in the capital in memory of the victim,
holding placards demanding "Respect" and "Justice." Delhi
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit joined the women for a prayer session for the
victim.
The government has set up a task
force to monitor women's safety in New Delhi and to review whether police were
properly protecting women. It had set up two earlier bodies to look into the
handling of the rape case and to suggest changes in the nation's rape laws.
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