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4 convicted in India fatal gang rape
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An Indian court convicted four men yesterday in the deadly gang rape of a young woman on a moving New Delhi bus, a brutal crime that galvanized public anger over the widespread sexual violence faced by Indian women.
As word of the verdict filtered out, protesters outside the courthouse chanted “Hang them! Hang them!”
The men were convicted on all the counts against them, including rape and murder, and now face the possibility of hanging. The sentences are expected to be handed down today.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said in his verdict the men, who tricked the 23-year-old rape victim and her male friend into boarding the bus they were driving, had committed murder of a helpless person.
The parents of the woman had tears in their eyes as the verdicts were read. The mother sat just a few feet from the convicted men in a tiny courtroom jammed with lawyers, police and reporters.
Protesters called the December 16 attack a wake-up call for India, where women have long talked quietly of enduring everything from sexual comments to public groping to rape, but where they would often face blame themselves if they complained publicly.
“Every girl at any age experiences this — harassment or rape. We don’t feel safe,” said law school graduate Rabia Pathania. “That’s why we’re here. We want this case to be an example for every other case that has been filed and will be filed.”
The men were identified by the young woman’s friend, and police say they could be seen on security cameras near the bus.
The men, most of them from a crowded New Delhi neighborhood of hand-made brick shanties filled by migrants from poor rural villages, were riding around the city in an off-duty bus when police say they came across the woman and her friend waiting at a bus stop. The pair were heading home after an evening showing of “Life of Pi” at a high-end mall.
It wasn’t late. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood. The bus, by all appearances, was just a way for the two to get home.
Instead, the attackers beat the friend into submission, held down the woman and repeatedly raped her. They penetrated her with a metal rod, causing severe internal injuries that led to her death two weeks later.
The woman, who was from a poor migrant family, had recently finished her exams for a physiotherapy degree. She was, the family hoped, their path to the bottom rungs of India’s growing middle class.
With the defendants were two other men. Police say Ram Singh, 33, hanged himself in prison. Another man, an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack, was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence, three years in a reform home.
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