Charges expected in India bus rape case
Indian police were today preparing to file rape and murder charges against a group of men accused of sexually assaulting a 23-year-old university student on a bus in New Delhi.
The attack on the woman, who later died of her injuries, has caused outrage across India and sparked demands for tough new rape laws, better police protection for women and a sustained campaign to change society’s views about women.
Police arrested six people in the case and planned to file charges today in a new fast-track court in south Delhi that was inaugurated the day before to deal specifically with crimes against women, police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. Police planned to ask for the death penalty in the case.
One of the attackers said he was a juvenile and authorities were conducting medical tests on him to determine whether to try him with the others or send him to juvenile court.
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.
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.
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 movie 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 hours 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.
Since the attack, women have held near-daily protests and candle-light vigils in New Delhi, demanding action to stop the daily harassment they face, from groping to even more violent attacks.
