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| Three-year-old Indian daughter witnessed the gang-rape of her mother (model released) Photo: |
A three-year-old girl was forced to watch as her mother was gang-raped and her infant brother killed in an attack on board a bus in India that has been described as “ghastlier” even than the infamous 2012 Nirbhaya case.
Details of the rape of the 28-year-old woman by a bus driver and conductor in Uttar Pradesh state on Monday night emerged after the three-year-old daughter, who hid in a corner of the vehicle during the assault, managed to escape and was later found by police.
“The incident took place when fellow passengers left the bus,” said Yamuna Prasad, police superintendent responsible for the village of Sheeshgarh, where the attack took place. “We have arrested the accused and sent the woman for medical examination.”
Madhu Garg, of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, told the Times of India that the incident was “ghastlier than Delhi’s Nirbhaya case” due to the death of the infant.
She pledged to hold protests if murder charges were not filed against the accused, who have so far been booked only for gang-rape and culpable homicide offences.
The rape victim had been returning to her home in Rampur on Monday night from visiting her sister in Sheeshgarh.
The assailants forced the woman to consume alcohol before setting upon her, the girl said. The unconscious woman and her daughter were found along with the dead infant on the roadside the following day. The accused men were arrested later on Tuesday.
The attack will heighten fears for the safety of India’s women on public transport, following the gang rape and murder of Delhi medical student Jyoti Singh in December 2012.
Ms Singh was later christened Nirbhaya – meaning “the brave one’ – by India’s press, until her mother instructed journalists to use her real name, saying that the perpetrators rather than the victims of rape should be ashamed.
The incident prompted nationwide protests, which resurfaced in December last year when the youngest of her assailants – a juvenile at the time – was released after completing his jail term.
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