Jaya Bachchan wants rapists lynched
PARLIAMENTARIAN CALLS FOR THE PERPETRATORS TO BE ‘LYNCHED’
That’s the best justice for the victim, former actress tells parliament
Hundreds of Indian protesters took to the streets yesterday as public anger grew over the brutal gangrape and murder of a female veterinary doctor, with one MP calling for the perpetrators to be “lynched”.
The demonstrations in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and elsewhere took place as police found the semi-naked body of a six-year-old girl who appears to have been raped and then strangled with her school belt in Rajasthan.
The spark for the protests was the gang-rape and murder by four men of the 27-year-old vet next to a busy road in the outskirts of Hyderabad on Wednesday evening. The men deflated a tyre on her moped and lured her to a truck yard with the promise of fixing it. Police say that the men then raped and murdered her before setting the body on fire under an isolated bridge.
The protests yesterday saw demonstrators brandish placards with slogans such as “We want justice”. Some covered their mouths with black cloth, demanding that the government provide security and punish the guilty. “I am outraged because I don’t want to live with that fear,” Kawalpreet Kaur, a student at the New Delhi rally told AFP. Other marches were expected later yesterday, including in the eastern city of Kolkata.
On Saturday, police used force to disperse hundreds of protesters after they tried to storm into a police station in Hyderabad where the four accused were held.
Raped and throttled
In parliament, lawmakers yesterday also expressed their anguish, with Jaya Bachchan, a former actress and now an MP, saying the perpetrators should be “brought out in public and
lynched”.
Another member demanded a sex offenders’ registry and that rapists be castrated, as others blamed the immense backlog of cases in the Indian legal system for the rise in sexual violence.
In Rajasthan in the west, a 40-year-old man was arrested yesterday following the discovery of the girl’s body a day after she went missing from her school in a village near state capital Jaipur. Investigators said the preliminary report suggests that she was raped and throttled with her school uniform belt before being thrown in bushes in a field.