The recent rape of a young woman on a moving bus by a group of men in Delhi sparked outrage across India on Tuesday, triggering protests in Parliament and on the streets of the capital, and calls for the death penalty for perpetrators.
”A terrible, terrible atrocity has happened,” Renuka Chowdhury, a member of Parliament, said during a raucous session in the upper house. ”I am not going to allow this incident to become another statistic.”
Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the opposition, demanded that the death penalty be applied to rapists. ”She will live her whole life as a living corpse if she survives,” Ms. Swaraj said of the woman. ”Why should there not be the death penalty in such a case?”
The woman, 23, boarded a chartered school bus with a male friend in Munirka, a south Delhi neighborhood, on Sunday evening. While on the bus, which they were led to believe by the driver was a public bus, she was raped by at least two men, according to the police. When the woman’s friend tried to defend her, he was beaten with an iron rod. The two were than stripped of their clothing and thrown off the bus onto a highway.
Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said in a news conference on Tuesday that the men on the bus had been on a “joyride” when they picked up the victims. “The idea was to have fun,” he said. The police plan to ask the courts to ”fast track” the case, he said, and prosecutors will seek the maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The woman is being treated for her injuries at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, where she reportedly regained consciousness on Tuesday after multiple surgeries, local news media reported. Four men, including the bus driver, have been arrested based on evidence from nearby surveillance cameras, the police said.
Across Delhi, women’s groups and students organized protests to demand better security, at one point shutting a highway that runs around the city. Several hundred protesters gathered around the police station where the complaint was filed, holding placards and chanting slogans.
”This is an expression of our horror and anger and discontent at how things are,” said Komal, a doctoral student at Jawaharlal Nehru University who only gave her first name. ”The government has to take responsibility.”
She said she takes the same bus route as the victim, and often feels unsafe traveling in Delhi. Being sexually harassed is an ”everyday experience,” she said, adding that women are constantly followed by men and groped on public transport.
”This is not about sexuality, it’s about power and violence,” said Anupama Ramakrishnan, 33, who is studying sociology at Delhi University, blaming what she called ”a deeply held sense of patriarchy.”
India’s upper house of Parliament was adjourned briefly Tuesday afternoon after lawmakers traded shouts over the issue. Lawmakers later called for better safety for women in Delhi, which attracts a large number of female students and professionals.
Delhi is notorious in India for its high rate of crime against women. Nearly six hundred rapes were reported in Delhi last year, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore combined.
Some of India’s most prominent activists and social commentators took to Twitter to voice their opinion. ”Security in mobility for a woman is the first right she needs to be guaranteed,” said Kiran Bedi, a social activist and former police officer. ”Failure to ensure this is clear failure of governance.”
The outrage in Delhi was accompanied by an outpouring of suggestions for how rapes could be curbed in newspapers, press conferences and in social media. These include better training for the police, the establishment of fast track courts to ensure speedy justice and more stringent rape laws. A conviction of rape currently carries a minimum sentence of two years.
