Eleven people including several women have been arrested after a young mother was allegedly abducted, gang-raped and then paraded through the lanes of Delhi in broad daylight, Indian police said on Friday.
The incident, the latest to spotlight sexual violence in India, drew widespread condemnation including from the Delhi Commission for Women and Delhi's chief minister, who called it “shameful”.
Footage on social media, which could not be independently verified, showed the victim — her face blackened with ink and her hair chopped off — being pushed and heckled by several women as onlookers cheered and filmed with their phones.
R. Sathiyasundaram, deputy commissioner of police, said the incident in the Shahdara district of east Delhi on Wednesday was a result of “previous enmity” among neighbours.He gave no further details but media reports said a 16-year-old relative of the perpetrators had killed himself by jumping in front of a train after the married 21-year-old woman rejected his advances.
“All 11 arrested including two minors, who can't be tried as adults, belong to a single-family and the videos clearly show that the women were at the forefront,” Sathiyasundaram told AFP.
The victim told police that she was abducted by members of the family before being raped by several men and minors — egged on by the women — and then beaten with sticks and paraded outside.
“We are examining the videos to identify others who were involved and there will be more arrests,” Chinmay Biswal, additional commissioner of Delhi police, told AFP.
The woman, who has a two-year-old child, is now receiving counselling after the incident, which reportedly took place barely 50 metres (yards) from a police booth that was unmanned at the time.
India's rape laws were overhauled after a notorious 2012 gang rape in New Delhi but the number of offences remains high, with more than 28,000 rapes reported in 2020.
Many more are thought to go unreported and police have long been accused of not doing enough to prevent violent crime and failing to bring sexual assault cases to court.
India is the world’s most dangerous country for women due to the high risk of sexual violence and being forced into slave labour, according to a poll of global experts .
War-torn Afghanistan and Syria ranked second and third in the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts on women’s issues, followed by Somalia and Saudi Arabia.
The only Western nation in the top 10 was the United States, which ranked joint third when respondents were asked where women were most at risk of sexual violence, harassment and being coerced into sex.
The poll was a repeat of a survey in 2011 that found experts saw Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia as the most dangerous countries for women.
Experts said India moving to the top of poll showed not enough was being done to tackle the danger women faced, more than five years after the rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi made violence against women a national priority.
“India has shown utter disregard and disrespect for women ... rape, marital rapes, sexual assault and harassment, female infanticide has gone unabated,” said Manjunath Gangadhara, an official at the Karnataka state government.
“The (world’s) fastest growing economy and leader in space and technology is shamed for violence committed against women.” Government data shows reported cases of crime against women rose by 83 per cent between 2007 and 2016, when there were four cases of rape reported every hour.
The survey asked respondents which five of the 193 United Nations member states they thought were most dangerous for women and which country was worst in terms of healthcare, economic resources, cultural or traditional practices, sexual violence and harassment, non-sexual violence and human trafficking.
Respondents also ranked India the most dangerous country for women in terms of human trafficking, including sex slavery and domestic servitude, and for customary practices such as forced marriage, stoning and female infanticide.
India’s Ministry of Women and Child Development declined to comment on the survey results.
Afghanistan fared worst in four of the seven questions, with concerns over healthcare and conflict-related violence.