New India gang rape attack

From The Telegraph.

New India gang rape attack

Six men have been arrested and police are hunting a seventh for the gang-rape of a woman who was kidnapped and raped after boarding a bus in India's Punjab state.

The case appears to have striking parallels with that of the 23-year-old student whose gang-rape and killing on a moving bus provoked protests throughout India.

Women's rights campaigners on Sunday night accused the police of compounding the victim's suffering by disclosing her identity in breach of Indian rape law.

Her identification has left her open to humiliation and coercion in any court trial, they said.

Details of this latest gang-rape emerged as the mother of the Delhi gang-rape and murder victim told The Sunday Telegraph of her anguish at the brutality of her daughter's ordeal and her determination that her killers be "burned alive " for their crime.

The outrage over the young woman's gang-rape and killing however has yet to filter throughout the country from where stories of rape and violent sexual assaults continue to emerge.

In the latest case, a 29 year mother of two had been travelling home and was attacked after boarding a private bus whose driver offered to drive her directly to her village on Friday evening.

She had been returning from her parents' home in Jagatpur, near Pathankot in Punjab, to her own home. After the boarding the bus however the driver, Daler Singh, and his conductor Ravi, diverted the bus, switched to a motorbike and took her to a secluded spot where they were joined by five other men and gang-raped the woman.

The following morning the attackers dropped the woman at her own village from where she went to the police station to report the gang-rape.

The extent of the victim's injuries are not known, but a medical examination has confirmed she was raped, according to the police.

Senior superintendent of Police Ranjeet Singh said one of the accused is in hiding, while the other six have been arrested and have confessed to committing the crime.

According to SSP Singh, the woman had appealed to the driver to stop the bus but her pleas were ignored. The victim was "a bit mentally weak," he told The Indian Express.

Women's rights campaigner Dr Ranjana Kumari, head of the Centre for Policy Research, said the case showed that India's states had yet to hear the outrage in Delhi over the recent gang-rape and murder.

"For this immediately after the Delhi [gang-rape], it seems the other states are not waking up to the situation. The police should know better than to name the girl. They should know the law. By revealing her identity they have compounded the humiliation of the woman and she can now be harassed and coerced into a compromise [with her attackers]. It is totally wrong," she told The Daily Telegraph.