Third suspect arrested over gang rape in Mumbai

Police officers escort a man, accused of raping a photo journalist, at a court in Mumbai yesterday.

Agencies/Mumbai

Police arrested a third man yesterday on accusations of gang-raping a woman photographer in Mumbai - an attack that has renewed anger over the country’s treatment of women.

Echoing a similar assault in New Delhi in December that sparked nationwide protests, five men are alleged to have raped the woman, in her early 20s, in central Mumbai when she was on a magazine assignment with a male colleague on Thursday evening.

Officers arrested the first suspect on Friday and a second arrest was made overnight, police spokesman Satyanarayan Choudhary said.

The attack, which shocked a city seen as far safer for women than New Delhi, sparked outrage on social media sites, uproar in the parliament and protests in Mumbai and elsewhere.

Ruling Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi added her voice to the concerns yesterday, saying she was “saddened and pained” over the case.

“It is a heinous crime,” she told reporters in the national capital.

The young woman, reportedly a journalism intern, was taken for treatment at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital, where staff said that she was in stable condition with internal and external injuries.

“While we may still believe that Mumbai is a safe city for women, today that belief lies badly bruised,” said a front-page editorial in the Mumbai Mirror.

The latest attack “only reaffirms Mumbai’s rapidly declining safety record and its decaying moral core,” the Mirror said.

The Mid-Day newspaper, under the headline “Real change needed,” said that the challenge is “to build society that looks at women as equal citizens.”

The Times of India quoted a statement by the victim from her hospital bed.

“I want no other woman in this city and country to go through such brutal physical humiliation,” she was quoted as saying. “The perpetrators should be punished severely as they have ruined my life.”

The incident comes eight months after a 23-year-old woman was gang-raped by five men in a moving bus in New Delhi, while her male companion was beaten up. She died two weeks later from severe injuries.

A trial is in its final stages in the New Delhi case, which sparked massive protests and led to a tougher rape law.

The Mumbai gang-rape took place in an abandoned mill compound next to a fashionable area of apartment and office blocks, shops and restaurants.

The pair of photographers were approached by members of the group and told they should not be there, after which the man was tied up with a belt and the woman was raped repeatedly nearby, Mumbai’s Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh told reporters.

He described the attack as “a shameful and extremely disturbing event.”

The police chief said the second suspect “has admitted that he has done wrong,” adding that the other suspects may have fled to the city’s suburbs.

Police say they have identified the two remaining suspects after releasing their sketches to the public and 20 special teams have been formed as part of the search.

The first two suspects appeared yesterday before a Mumbai court, where political groups protested loudly outside. They were remanded in police custody until August 30.

The grandmother of the first suspect told the media that he is aged only 16, although police initially said he was in his early 20s. They now say he is an unemployed 19-year-old.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan told NDTV news that the attack was “incredibly horrid.”

“This is a city that prides itself on women feeling secure - this (assault) breaches all social norms... something is going wrong with us,” he said.