Four raped in India in broad daylight

A woman on board a Delhi-bound train was gang-raped, killed and her body hanged from a tree in a mango orchard in Bhagalpur district police’s jurisdiction.

Police said that the 32-year-old victim, on board Brahmaputra Mail for Delhil, was dragged to the mango orchard and gang-raped by unidentified persons after she alighted from the train between Vikramshila and Kahalgaon stations. She was strangled and her body was hanged. Police recovered the body on Sunday and sent it to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital Bhagalpur for postmortem.The victim hails from New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal and boarded the train from Alipore to Delhi with her son.

“As the train was jampacked, she tried to get down at Sahibganj but was prevented from doing so by co-passengers” said, ASP, Bhagalpur, Meenu Kumari. “When the train slowed down between Vikramshila and Kahalgaon stations, she jumped out. A group of intoxicated people then dragged her to a nearby mango orchard and sexually assaulted her. Liquor bottles were found at the spot” he added. However some of the Brahmaputra mail passengers allege that the perpetrators pulled the chain to stop the train and forced her out of her compartment.
A railway ticket and cell phone number of her village pradhan written on a piece of paper was recovered from the victim’s possession.

The incident came to light just a day after a 29-year-old woman was reportedly gang-raped by a group of men in the north Indian state of Punjab. The victim was traveling to her village in Gurdaspur district, 280 miles from Delhi, on Friday night. Per details, the bus driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and instead drove her; the only passenger on the bus, to a remote farmhouse where he and the bus conductor along with four accomplices raped her. Gurdaspur Police Deputy Superintendent Gurmej Singh told sources that all of the perpetrators had been arrested and cases had been lodged against them.

The Delhi rape set off a fierce debate about attitudes towards women in India, where per official statistics; a woman is raped every 20 minutes. Since the rape of a medical student in Delhi, dozens of incidents of sexual violence against women which were not reported before are being given space on Indian media. Newspapers reported the case of a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Sonipat, Haryana, who was badly injured when she attempted suicide by setting herself on fire after being raped.

Seema Mustafa, a writer on social issues who heads the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Analysis k, said that in the past police had not “dealt with the issue severely. The message that goes out is that the punishment doesn’t match the crime. Criminals think they can get away it”.

In her first published comments, the mother of Delhi rape victim on Sunday said that “all six rapists of my daughter, including one believed to be a juvenile, deserve to die”.
She was quoted by The Times of India newspaper saying that her daughter told her that the youngest suspect had participated in the most brutal aspects of the rape.

There have been loud calls for a change in Indian laws so that juveniles committing heinous crimes can face the death penalty. The elderly, male-dominated Indian government has been heavily criticised for its slow and insensitive progress on the.

Moreover, on Thursday a 25-year-old woman jumped out of a moving train after allegedly being molested by a soldier. The train was en route from Darjeeling to Delhi. Per details, the soldier groped her after she came out of the lavatory. After pushing him back, the woman jumped from the Brahmaputra Mail line train. The mother of two is being treated in hospital in the city of Patna.

Indo-Asian News Agency reported that “her condition continues to be critical. A team of doctors is treating her. She has suffered injuries to her head and legs. The member of the Assam Rifles paramilitary force has been arrested and charged in connection with the incident.”