Two Indian men gang-raped a mother on a bus in front of her three-year-old toddler and threw her 2-week-old son, killing him.
The three-year-old is the only witness to the crime.
“The incident took place when fellow passengers had left the bus. We have booked the two accused under Sections 376 D (gangrape) and 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC and sent them to jail. We will also book them under provisions of the Gangster Act,” announced Superintendent of Police (rural areas) Yamuna Prasad.
The men forced alcohol down the 28-year-old’s throat, which left “her in an inebriated condition for over 3 hours.” From Times of India:
The woman, a resident of Rampur, was returning home on Monday night after attending a family function at Khapuriya, a nearby village. As she alighted at her destination, the conductor, who belongs to a neighbouring village, promised to drop her at her place. However, as soon as the last passenger got down, they started assaulting her. When she resisted, the duo forced liquor into her mouth. In the melee, they also flung her 14-day-old boy. The infant died on the spot.
According to cops, the woman’s 3-year-old daughter hid herself behind a seat and watched the gory crime. As the duo carried her unconscious mother outside the vehicle and put her on the road next to the bus stand, the girl quietly slipped out of the bus and ran to a place where the accused couldn’t see her. It was only in the early hours of Tuesday when the woman’s husband accompanied by locals came looking for her that they found the girl by the side of her unconscious mother and dead infant.
“The incident is ghastlier than Delhi’s Nirbhaya case, given the fact that the accused killed the victim’s 14-day-old infant,” declared Madhu Garg, state head of All India Democratic Women’s Association. “Even then, murder charges have not been pressed against the two. We will hold protests if the two are not booked for the murder of the infant.”
India’s treatment of women received international attention after six men gang-raped a woman on a bus in 2012. Before then, rape victims hardly reported the crime because society casts them aside or police and relatives pressured them to drop the case. But the outrage after the death of the young woman caused massive protests and the Indian government to change its rape laws.
But violence and sex crimes against women still occur.
In January, a 14-year-old girl told NDTV how three men held her in a “dark room” and raped her for two weeks. They then shot her twice and dumped her in a well.
“After a fortnight of repeated abuse, one night they said they will let me go,” she said, adding:
They put me in the car and drove to a store to buy alcohol and then parked the car near a well. They told me they will let me go but as I took a few steps back, they fired two shots. The first bullet hit my bone. I didn’t feel a thing, my body just went numb. But after the second one I fainted.
Last May, seven or eight men raped a nun after they broke into the Convent of Jesus and Mary School.