Rape victim detailed attack before dying
Asked how she would like the men punished, she said they should be ‘ burned alive’
NEW DELHI — The 23- yearold student whose gang rape on a Delhi bus provoked outrage across India named her killers and revealed the terrible details of their savage attack in a “dying declaration” seen by The Daily Telegraph.
Jyoti Singh, a physiotherapy student, was attacked by six men on Dec. 16 after she boarded a bus with a friend as they returned from a trip to a cinema in one of the city’s smart shopping centres.
She was beaten so badly that 95 per cent of her intestines had to be removed in a series of operations. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital where doctors said she had suffered from severe internal and brain injuries, a heart attack and abdominal infections.
Five men appeared in court earlier this week charged with her kidnap, gang rape and murder, while a sixth defendant, who is believed to be 17, will be tried in a juvenile court.
Lawyers for four of the men said they will plead not guilty and claimed they were tortured by police into making false confessions.
They will be accused by the victim from beyond the grave in a “dying declaration” made to a magistrate as she fought to survive her injuries in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on December 21, eight days before she died.
Usha Chaturvedi, a magistrate understood to have taken Singh’s statement in the presence of her mother, asked the victim how she would like her then gang- rapists, and now murderers, to be punished?
“All of them should be hung to death so that these criminals do not do any such acts to any other girls, which is inhuman. They are animal- like people. They should be burned alive,” she replied.
Six people raped me in turns for nearly one hour in a moving bus. The driver of the bus kept changing so that he could also rape me.
JYOTI SINGH VICTIM’S STATEMENT BEFORE SHE DIED
Singh said she and her friend Awninder Pandey boarded a white chartered bus after watching the film The Life of Pi at Delhi’s Select Citywalk shopping centre.
There were “six or seven” people on the bus and they assumed they were passengers. They had been apprehensive, but by the time they had paid their fare it was too late.
“The conductor closed the doors of the bus. He closed the lights of the bus and came towards my friend and started abusing and beating him,” she said.
“They held his hands and held me and took me to the back of the bus. They tore my clothes and raped me in turns. They hit me with an iron rod and bit me on my entire body with their teeth ... it hurt me a lot.
“They took all belongings, my mobile phone, purse, credit card, debit card, watches etc. Six people raped me in turns for nearly one hour in a moving bus. The driver of the bus kept changing so that he could also rape me.”
She and her friend had put up a fierce fight at the outset, she said, but their screams to passersby outside went unheard and their attackers snatched their mobile phones.
For half of her ordeal she was unconscious, she said, but each time she awoke in the darkness she was attacked again.
When she and her friend showed no further signs of life, their attackers stripped off his clothes and threw them both out.
“They removed all the clothes of my friend and they thought we had both died. They threw us out of the moving bus. We were both naked on the side of the road and many passersby actually saw us and informed the police control room,” she said.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the host of a reality show came forward to say that Ram Singh, 33, who police say drove the bus while the attack took place and also raped the woman, appeared on the program Aap Ki Kaccheri or Your Court in 2011 and lost his case on the show against his employer seeking compensation for injuries suffered while driving a bus.