Little progress seen in India one year after deadly rape
Father of victim says society needs to change before women are safe
NEW DELHI Women in India will never be safe until society changes its attitudes, the father of the Delhi gang-rape victim said on the anniversary of the assault which killed her.
His daughter, who became known as Nirbhaya or The Fearless One, was gang raped, beaten and left for dead after she boarded a bus home from the cinema with a male friend on December 16 last year. She died from her injuries 13 days later.
The savagery of the attack and the determination of the victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, to survive and bring her rapists to justice provoked protests in India and national soul searching.
But one year after the incident, the victim’s family is still deep in grief and fearful for India’s women who they say remain in danger.
“As long as the mindset of the society will not change, women can never be safe out on the roads ... every other day cases of rape and sexual harassment are getting reported, where is the change? I don’t see any change,” said her father.
The number of women tourists to India slumped in the wake of the attack, as the scale of rapes and sexual assaults began to emerge.
Six men were arrested, four of whom were sentenced to death in September. One of the accused was found dead in his cell and the sixth, a juvenile, was sentenced to three years in a rehabilitation home.
The case led to a reform of rape and sexual assault laws and tougher penalties for those convicted.
But the disappointment of the victim’s family is shared by human rights groups and women’s equality campaigners, who said reported rape cases have nevertheless increased and new fast-track court trials for sexual assaults have yet to act as a deterrent.
The campaign group Action Aid revealed new figures which showed rapes had doubled in the capital since the attack and the number of sexual assaults had quadrupled. Rapes had increased from 706 last year to 1,330 in the first nine and a half months of 2013.