Delhi gang-rape accused face rape and murder charges

guardian.co.uk | Jan 3rd 2013

Indian police are set to file rape and murder charges against a group of men accused of sexually assaulting a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in New Delhi, as further cases of sexual violence continued to be reported around the country.

The attack on 16 December on the woman, who later died of her injuries, has caused outrage across India and led to demands for tough new rape laws and better police protection for women. It has also sparked an unprecedented debate about social attitudes to women.

Protests, though less numerous than over recent days and weeks, continued on Thursday in the Indian capital and elsewhere.

Recent incidents include a politician in the north-east of the country reported to have assaulted a woman on Wednesday night and a teenage schoolgirl attacked by at least two men in the southern city of Puducherry, as well as a 17-year-old in Delhi who has accused two cousins of repeated rape.

Five men aged between 18 and 35 who were detained by police two days after the attack were expected to be charged in a new fast-track court in south Delhi, inaugurated on Wednesday to deal specifically with crimes against women.

Police will ask for the death penalty in the case. Executions are rare in India, where a "rarest of the rare" principle means that most of those who receive a death sentence are jailed for decades instead.

A sixth alleged attacker has said he is a juvenile and thus cannot, under Indian law, be charged with the other accused. Authorities were conducting medical tests on him to determine his true age.

Altamas Kabir, the Indian chief justice, said the accused should be tried swiftly, but cautioned that they needed to be given a fair trial and not be subjected to mob justice.

Police officials told the Guardian they were "taking maximum security precautions" to avoid "any mishap" when the accused are finally brought to the court. Hearings are likely to last several weeks, they said.

Four other fast-track courts are planned in the capital to hold trials in sexual assault cases, which often get bogged down for years in India's notoriously sluggish court system.

The country has a chronic lack of judges. Even if there were no new cases, it would take courts decades to clear the backlog of hundreds of thousands across the country.

The new courts will work to provide swift justice "so that the message is sent to all and sundry that these matters are going to be dealt with seriously", Kabir said.

Indian states are also introducing new measures to combat sexual violence. In the northern state of Bihar, officials have asked the police to complete investigations in all 500 pending rape cases and charge the accused.

Many cases never reach court in a country where there is intense social pressure against families reporting sexual assaults and where women are often blamed for the attacks they suffer. When women do report rapes, police often refuse to file charges and pressure the victims to reach a compromise with their attackers. An investigation by the news magazine Tehelka revealed widespread misogyny among officers.

Delhi police on Wednesday started new training sessions for thousands of investigating officers.

In a sign that official attitudes towards such behaviour might be changing, authorities in the state of Punjab dismissed two police officers and suspended a third last week over accusations that they delayed investigating a reported gang rape and harassed the victim, who then killed herself.

A number of other cases are being re-examined, with a 16-year-old case in the southern state of Kerala involving the alleged gang rape of a teenager over a period of weeks by more than 40 men now to be heard by India's supreme court.

Women's activists hope that the rape and killing of the university student last month will mark a turning point in India's attitude toward women. The victim, whose name has not been revealed, was attacked after boarding a bus with a male companion after watching an evening showing of the film Life of Pi. The vehicle was a charter bus that illegally picked up the two passengers, authorities said. The driver was among the six arrested.

The pair were attacked for at least an hour as the bus drove through the city, even passing through police checkpoints during the assault. They were eventually dumped naked on the side of the road. The woman, who was assaulted with an iron bar, suffered severe internal injuries that eventually caused her death on Saturday at a hospital in Singapore.

Media reports say police have gathered 30 witnesses, and the charges have been detailed in a document running to more than 1,000 pages. Police also detained the owner of the bus over allegations that he used false documents to obtain permits to run the private bus service.

The Bar Association said its lawyers would not defend the six suspects because of the nature of the crime, but the court is expected to appoint attorneys to defend them.

Since the attack, women have held near-daily protests and candlelit vigils in New Delhi, demanding action to stop the daily harassment they face, from groping to more violent attacks.

The Indian supreme court was on Thursday also expected to hear a petition demanding that Indian lawmakers facing sexual assault charges be suspended from office.

Six state lawmakers are facing rape prosecutions and two national parliamentarians are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape, said Jagdeep S Chhokar, an official with the Association for Democratic Reforms, which tracks political candidates' criminal records.

The petition from retired government administrator Promilla Shanker also asks the court to force the national government to fast-track thousands of rape cases across the country.

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