NEW DELHI – Rape, murder and other charges were filed on Thursday against five men suspected of carrying out the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a case that has sparked outrage and protests across India.
Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Indian lawyers protested on Thursday outside a court in New Delhi where charges were filed in a gang rape case.
The police submitted the accusations against the five men to a magistrate in the South Delhi neighborhood where the crime took place on Dec. 16. In addition to rape and murder, the charges were expected to include kidnapping, robbery and assault, a list of crimes that could result in the rare imposition of the death penalty. The official submission of the charges was expected to be kept secret because of confidential details, the police said. A sixth person accused in the case is a juvenile, and his case will be handled in a separate proceeding. The magistrate was expected to refer the case to a fast-track court set up in recent days to handle cases involving crimes against women. That court is expected to hold a trial soon in stark contrast to the apathy and years of delay that Indian rape victims often face when seeking justice.
The five are accused of luring the 23-year-old and her boyfriend onto a bus in South Delhi, beating them and abusing her so brutally with a metal rod during the rape that she sustained fatal internal injuries. The woman clung to life for two weeks but died on Saturday in a Singapore hospital, where she had been transferred for special care.
Gang rapes have become almost routine in India, a country that some surveys suggest has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. Rape complaints increased 25 percent between 2006 and 2011, although it is impossible to know whether this represents a real increase in crime or simply an increased willingness by victims to file charges and by the police to accept them.
But something about the recent crime caught the public’s attention. Among the reasons could be the randomness of the crime (most rape victims know their abusers), its brutality and the sympathetic profile of the victim.
The outpouring of anger at the crime caught the government by surprise and there has been widespread criticism of its aggressive response to protesters which included tear gas, water cannons and beatings by truncheon-wielding riot police officers. The government invoked a terrorism law that prohibits even small gatherings and it closed a huge portion of the capital to vehicular and pedestrian traffic, which represented a punishing loss to businesses in the area.
The government’s reaction fed longtime criticism that India’s police are too often used to guard the powerful from the people rather than to protect the people from predators. India’s police are generally poorly trained, deeply corrupt and often viewed by women as predators rather than protectors – one reason that laws forbid officers from arresting a woman or even bringing her to a police station for questioning during nighttime hours.
The case has also led to an ongoing discussion about the conflict between the aspirations of India’s rising middle class and a deeply conservative and patriarchal culture that views the recent educational and economic successes of Indian women with unease and even alarm. An estimated 25,000 women are murdered each year by families who view their choice of mate as inappropriate, and Indian newspapers and television news programs now feature almost daily stories about new rape cases.
Kishwar Desai, an author, wrote an opinion article in The Indian Express on Thursday that said the gang rape illustrated to some that “a certain class of men is deeply uncomfortable with women displaying their independence, receiving education and joining the work force. The gang rape becomes a form of subduing the women, collectively, and establishing their male superiority.”
Because of the intense interest sparked by the case, a vast scrum of television cameras and reporters jostled outside of the courthouse for much of the day. And with officials refusing to provide routine information about whether the suspects in the case would arrive at the courthouse, rumors about the day’s events ricocheted around the media like a drop of water on a hot frying pan.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 3, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article erroneously reported that the charges had been filed earlier on Thursday.
Murder Charges Expected Against 5 Men in New Delhi Gang Rape
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