Thousands of protesters, who rallied at the India Gate monument in the heart of the Indian capital, were calling for stepped-up security for women across the country and changes to the way crimes against women are prosecuted.
Angry protesters, demonstrating for a sixth day, shouted "We want justice" and "Hang the rapists" as police struggled to control the crowd, with the young victim still battling for her life in a New Delhi hospital.
Six drunken men were joyriding on a bus when they picked up the physiotherapy student and her 28-year-old male companion and took turns raping her. Afterwards, they threw the pair off the speeding vehicle.
Police say the woman was attacked with an iron rod after being raped in what was the latest in a series of violent assaults on women in the capital.
Riot police were called in and routes leading to the protest site were cordoned off to contain the protests in which some of the demonstrators were also throwing stones.
Clashes erupted when a group in the crowd, made up mainly of young women and men, tried to break through police barricades and march towards the president's house.
The government appealed for calm as outrage over the attack on the woman intensified.
"This is not a way to protest. Trying to storm buildings and breaking barricades is not a way to start a dialogue," junior home minister RPN Singh told India's CNN-IBN television network.
"The government is trying to do whatever it can to take measures and make sure that women are safe in the country."
India's government, facing growing protests over the gang-rape, vowed on Friday to press for life sentences for the woman's six attackers and promised stricter policing.
The government also said it would pay the medical bills of the 23-year-old victim, who suffered serious intestinal injuries in the attack last Sunday night.
India's former army chief V.K. Singh, who joined Saturday's protest, blamed "systemic failure" for the spate of crimes against women and called for immediate reforms to tackle the problem.
"This problem is because of systemic failure of governance. Police reforms have been lying in cold storage for the last so many years," he told reporters.
Experts say a combination of abusive sexual behaviour, a scant fear of the law and India's creaky judicial system encourage such attacks in the bustling city of 19 million people.
Five of the suspects were arrested soon after the crime and a sixth was caught Friday.
COMMENTS (17)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1714024018-0/ModiLara-(1)1714024018-0-270x192.webp)
@Naeem Siddiqui:
Actually I'm feeling great about myself, thank you.
It's funny how it was a Hindustani who dragged Pakistan into this subject, and yet I'm apparently the one spreading hatred just by having the nerve to state that Hindustan has its own issues while we have ours. The amount of venom and bile that these Hindustanis spread on these comments boards, on a Pakistani news site as well, is beyond belief - I'm curious to know where your hand-wringing morality is when it comes to them.
But anyway, the point was addressed and the matter resolved, so to answer your question, yeah I feel just fine. Thank you for your concern.
Hasan
@Antanu G and @Hasan
you both feeling good and soothing yourselves on each others miseries :)
@Hasan, I feel sad for you... If the hatred you are trying to spread makes you feel good for a moment or two, i wd say, you are right... We are the worst counry on this planet, and you are the best.. Pakistan for Peace and India bla bla./.. I do not want to say anything abt Pakistan on this matter... I feel ashamed that such incident took place in the capital .. however, I see hope in my countrymen come out on streets to protest, and show these politicians that we are one and united... I am sure at least we are going in the right direction, may be slow, but at least we re not receding... Inshallah, we will do our best to make sure that the next generation can lead a better life than what we have today...
@Antanu G:
LOL...whining about off-topic comments in one sentence, making an inane remark about people being blown up in another. Until you people learn the bitter reality that exists in your society beyond the glittering skyscrapers and immense wealth of a handful of Brahmins in Bombay, you will continue to suffer shocks like this news report - and unfortunately the world will continue to ridicule you.
By the way, since you seemed to think it was relevant, Pakistan has lost approximately 50,000 people to suicide/terrorist attacks over the past decade. In Hindustan, an estimated 500,000 female foetuses a year are destroyed either through gender selection or simply by being buried alive. 500,000 a year compared to 50,000 a decade...now tell me, who are the real savages here?
Hasan
@Hasan: Standard Pakistani response. You can't seem to think beyond toilets (what this got do with the topic anyway).. At least people don't get blown up or shot dead every other day..ever heard of failed states list??
@rajeev: bang on target bro.. The chinese model shuld be followed.
@1984: Anna Hazare had a different motive altogether. Corruption. The humiliated woman is a brazen example of what is happening to women in India and Pakistan. Gang rape.
Anna Hazare carried out a peaceful hunger protest in order to pressurize the Indian government. Over here is public outrage over the public humiliation of a woman and the police saying that the perpetrators will be tried under the law. If it takes four years to punish a mullah accused of humiliating a ten year old in India, is it not justice delayed is justice denied?
If the police do their duty with diligence and honesty and the legislators update the existing law to meet the demands of time, such incidents will be minimized. My deepest and heartfelt sympathies for the woman who not only was physically humiliated but beaten with iron rods by drunken men in an attempt to silence her permanently. There is a difference.
Have a nice day and think before you ink.
@IceSoul:
Standard Hindustani response - impotent in your own country, so desperately looking across the border to feel better about yourselves. If you think you can put Pakistan and Hindustan in the same bracket, you are sadly deluded. I would never try to portray the former as a beacon of women's rights and tolerance, but in the major cities an attack of this sheer brutality is very rare indeed. In Hindustan it was carried out in your country's very capital - you should be ashamed and horrified at what your society has become; as if your other social indicators and health data was anything to brag about either. Once again, after hearing of this news, I am eternally grateful for the creation and independence of Pakistan, as well as our defence against Hindustani aggression over the past 65 years - not only do we have toilets in our country, we are also free from this kind of unspeakable horror happening in the very centre of our capital city. Only God knows what other bestial activity goes on in the village slums of your backward country.
Hasan
@1984: You still have doubts on whose side is our Government on?
@Kosher Nostra, Police siding with rapists? I am not as angry at your comment as I had been while reading a much more offensive comment, where the reader, most probably a Paki, wrote a comment implying that the victim of the rape was subjected to inhuman treatment just because she belonged to a minority community. I was furious and wrote a very strongly worded rebuttal, but, after re-reading and realizing that my language was very much offensive, I erased it myself. But, here, let me tell you this, a rapist is a rapist and he doesn't carry any other identity at all. Similarly, the victim too is just a woman, bereft of any other identity. The former deserves our contempt and hatred and the latter deserves our profound sympathy and care. The men who think otherwise are cowards of the worst kind.
The issues which led to this heinous rape are multifactorial which include societal attitudes to women, unplanned runaway urbanization and assertive expansion of educated women's attitudes and space in changing society .
This protest has been led by the middle class educated segment of society . The crime has been committed by rural migrants with plebeian origins
"Indian novelist Arundhati Roy said rape is seen as a "matter of feudal entitlement" in many parts of the country, and the reason this case had come to light is because the woman victim belongs to the affluent middle class.
She said attitudes towards women need to change in India, because a change in the law only will protect middle class women, but "the violence against other women who are not entitled will continue"." ( quoted from BBC news)
Unplanned urbanization leads to vast resentful underclass which lives a ghetto life of resentment and deprivation with no usual social inhibition . This is the class prone to crime , political exploitation for extremist ideology.
Mega cities of subcontinent point out to bleak future and shape of things to come like Delhi and Karachi . Do you think that subcontinent needs to follow the Chinese model of restrictive permit system in Mega cities for migrants ?
@Kosher Nostra: In Pakistan,recently police clashed with the protesters of the "Innocence Of Muslims" film...
Does that mean Pakistani Police approve that movie???
The duty of police is to maintain law and order.....Storming a building is no way a lawful behavior......The protests made by Anna Hazare never had any police clashes as they never tried to harm any human or buildings
Now the GOI/state govts will start imposing a whole new set of conditions on women/girls. Mother India must be weeping.
-An angry Indian.
Police siding with rapists?
Only massive protests can shake the Indian and Pakistani governments into action. Kudos to the Indian men and women who were rational enough to protest against the rape and not blame the victim as is done in Pakistan.
Respects for the people who participated in today's protest
This is a violation of basic human right of a girl. We need to study the case in a holistic approach.