Victim’s parents say gang rape killers must die

"When she said to them she would complain, they hammered her skull in with bricks. The way that they brutalised her is horrific." Ashwin Shenvi, Rohtak police chief

INDIA: The gang rape and murder of a young woman in northern India has revived a debate over whether the death penalty is a deterrent.

The 20-year-old woman was drugged by a jilted lover and driven to the city of Rohtak, northwest of Delhi, where she was assaulted by up to eight men.

When she vowed to report her attackers to the police, they smashed her skull in with a brick, mutilated her and ran her over with a car in an attempt to prevent identification of her corpse. Her body was found in a field at the weekend, being eaten by dogs.

Two men, including the former boyfriend, Sumit Kumar, were arrested and allegedly confessed to the attack.

Police say they are questioning up to six more suspects, with public anger mounting as the shocking details of the killing emerge.

‘‘When she said to them she would complain, they hammered her skull in with bricks. The way that they brutalised her is horrific,’’ Ashwin Shenvi, the local police chief, said.

Police in the state of Haryana have been criticised after it emerged that the victim had complained weeks ago of harassment by her former lover.

‘‘We had approached police with a complaint of harassment against the main suspect a month ago, but no action was taken,’’ one relative of the victim said.

The victim’s parents have demanded the death penalty for the attackers.

‘‘Nobody should suffer like my daughter. They must hang,’’ her mother told local media.

However, critics of the death penalty insist that it is no deterrent.

The latest attack was after India’s supreme court confirmed the death sentences of four men convicted of a gang rape in Delhi in 2012 that provoked international outrage.

Jyoti Singh, 23, a medical student, was raped by six men on a bus, later dying of her injuries. The attack saw thousands of people in major cities throughout the country take part in protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women. The public fury around the case prompted changes in the law, with tougher punishments and fasttrack courts for rape.

Despite this, human rights activists say the new laws and national soul-searching have not halted India’s rape epidemic, with reported attacks increasing to more than 34,000 last year.

Since 2012, the number of reported rapes in Delhi has increased to six a day. This has been partly attributed to victims showing greater confidence in coming forward as public awareness begins to chip away at the stigma around rape. The statistics underscore the scale of the crime, however, with the true figure thought to be many times higher.

- The Times