Women activists with banners and placards march along the Vijaypath from the Indian president’s residence as they participate in a protest condemning the recent gang-rape of a student in New Delhi yesterday.
IANS/New Delhi
The rage spread, rapidly and steadily, through India’s national capital yesterday as students, activists and just concerned citizens gathered at various places in the city to protest the torture and gang-rape of a young woman, now battling to stay alive in a Delhi hospital.
As the protests literally reached President Pranab Mukherjee’s doorstep, with angry demonstrators going right up till the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan and one even managing to enter the complex, Delhi Police finally nabbed the two men who were at large.
As the evening set in, hundreds reached 10 Janpath, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s official residence, and held candle march and noisy protests. Police erected barricades and stopped anyone from entering her heavily fortified residence.
The parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, on its part, summoned union Home Secretary R K Singh and Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar on Dec 27 to discuss atrocities against women and the law and order situation in the national capital.
R K Singh and Neeraj Kumar later held a press conference and said they will be seeking “maximum punishment” for the accused persons. They said they will seek fast-track and day-to-day trial in the case that has shocked the nation.
But the Delhi High Court said it is not “convinced” with the status report filed by the Delhi Police which did not mention the details of police officials patrolling the area where the woman was gang-raped and tortured in a moving bus.
A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said: “We have gone through the report and we are not convinced. None of the details of the police officials has been mentioned,” said the court expressing its displeasure at the police for not filing the detailed report.
Faced with the growing outrage, with protests not just in New Delhi but also elsewhere in the country, Delhi Police arrested two more accused, including one who has claimed that he is a juvenile. The sixth man identified as Akshay Thakur has been arrested from Aurangabad in Bihar.
In scenes unprecedented in the city, multiple protests broke out - at India Gate, Rajpath, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Jantar Mantar and 10 Janpath in the heart of Lutyens Delhi as well as outside Safdarjung Hospital, where the 23-year-old victim of the savage gang-rape fought a valiant battle against her injuries but continued to stay critical.Rarely, if ever, have so many people taken to the streets in so many different places for a single cause. It was an unstoppable momentum. Demanding justice and fast track courts, many people have rallied in protest in the capital in the five days since the incident on Sunday night, when the physiotherapist intern was brutally assaulted and her male friend beaten in a moving bus. Both were stripped and dumped by the roadside near the domestic airport after the nearly 40-minute ordeal.
The residence of Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit and the police headquarters have all witnessed the spontaneous outpouring of anger.
“About 250 protesters thronged the high-security zone of Rastrapati Bhavan. We had to divert them back to India Gate,” a senior police official said after forces tried in vain to control the surging demonstrators.
Swati, a student at the YWCA, managed to slip past the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan, before she was pushed back.
“They do nothing to protect us, and when we want justice, they say we need permission to enter the president’s house. Such a heinous crime has occurred, and they expect us to seek permission to protest,” Swati said.
As people hit the streets of Delhi to vent their grief and anger, the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in central Delhi offered the victim free intestinal transplant.
Doctors treating the woman said their focus was on providing her the best treatment as her life was at grave risk.
She underwent surgery to remove a gangrenous section of the intestine.
Facing protests, govt seeks life sentences for attackers
India’s government, facing swelling protests over the gang-rape of a female student on a bus, vowed yesterday to press for life sentences for her six attackers and promised stricter policing. Home Secretary R K Singh also said the government would pay the medical bills of the 23-year-old victim of the brutal Sunday night attack who is fighting for her life in hospital after suffering serious injuries to her intestines. “We will ask for the maximum punishment of life imprisonment and ask the court for the speedy trial of the accused,” Singh said as New Delhi and other cities continued to be swept by an unprecedented wave of demonstrations by women demanding better safety. Six drunken man 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. Experts say a combination of abusive sexual behaviour, a scant fear of law and India’s creaky judicial system encourages such attacks in the bustling city of 19mn people. Five people, including the bus driver, have been arrested while a search is underway for the remaining suspect, city police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said. Kumar said police have charged the detained suspects with rape and attempted murder. “Police teams are close on the heels of the sixth and we will get him soon,” Kumar said at a joint news conference with the home secretary. Kumar promised a slew of measures to “make Delhi safe,” promising that squads of officers would patrol the city, crack down on vehicles with darkened windows and zero in on drunken motorists.