DHAKA: Nine months after a 23-year-old student was fatally gang-raped on a moving bus in Delhi, a fast-track court will deliver its verdict on four of the six men who were arrested for a crime that shook India to its core, ignited street protests, and forced the introduction of tougher laws to punish sexual offences.
If the four men are found guilty of rape and murder, they could face the death sentence. They have all said they are not guilty.
The savage attack outraged a country inured to violence against women; thousands marched for days demanding better safety for women and swift justice for the student.
She had been so badly violated with an iron rod that she died of her injuries two weeks after the attack in a hospital in Singapore, where she was airlifted by a government which apologised for having failed her.
Before that, while she was fighting for her life in hospital in Delhi, she gave a lengthy statement to the police which served as key evidence in the trial. DNA tests and the testimony of her boyfriend who was with her on the bus and was assaulted by the gang will also establish the guilt of the defendants, say prosecutors.
Of the gang of six who were arrested, one committed suicide in his prison cell in March.
Another was 17 at the time of the assault and was sentenced last month to three years in a reform centre, the maximum punishment for a juvenile found guilty of rape and murder (Juvenile found guilty of rape and murder, gets less than three years in reform home).
The student`s parents wept after that verdict, describing it as grossly inadequate. "It is a crime to be born a girl in this country," said her father.
The police says that when the student and her friend were leaving the mall on a Sunday night after watching a film, the bus with the six men pulled up and promised to drop them home. The men were allegedly drunk and had decided hours earlier to find a woman they could rape that night, prosecutors have argued in court.
The police says the student`s friend was assaulted with an iron rod and thrown to the back of the bus before the men took turns to rape the physiotherapy intern. The couple was then thrown naked and bleeding onto the road, and the gang tried to run them over, but the girl`s friend pushed her out of the way, the police has claimed.
Her case led the government to clear new laws which make stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime, and provide for the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim`s death.
Fast-track courts were also cleared for rape cases.
Source: NDTV
BDST: 0848 HRS, SEP 10, 2013
RS/BSK
