當年今日﹕Gang rape of an Indian woman
【明報專訊】On 16 December 2012 an appalling crime happened in India: an intern (實習生) in her twenties was raped and tortured to death by six violent men. The crime provoked angry protests throughout the country despite its long history of sex violence.
1. The victim
The victim, a 23-year-old woman called Jyoti Singh Pandey, was a physiotherapy (物理治療) intern. She was born and raised in Delhi. Her father sold his agricultural land to educate her and worked double shifts to continue to pay for her schooling. This was rather unusual in a society where females are treated much less favourably than males.
2. The incident
The crime took place on 16 December 2012. Pandey took a charter bus home with a male friend after watching the movie Life of Pi (《少年Pi的奇幻漂流》) in South Delhi. On the bus there were six other people — five adults, including the driver, and one minor (未成年人).
The bus deviated from its route, which made Pandey's friend suspicious. He tried to intervene, but he was beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious with an iron rod. The men then dragged Pandey to the rear of the bus, and started to assault her physically and sexually. According to medical reports, she sustained serious injuries to her abdomen (腹部), intestines and genitals (生殖器), and they might have been caused by a blunt object. Police later identified a wheel jack handle as the weapon.
The attackers threw both victims off the moving bus, and the bus driver allegedly tried to drive it over Pandey, but her male friend pulled her aside. The victims were subsequently found by a passer-by.
Pandey had undergone a number of surgeries in India before she was flown to Singapore for further treatment. She died of her wounds on 29 December, 13 days after the assault.
3. The trial
The attackers were subsequently arrested and tried. They were Ram Singh (the bus driver), his brother Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma (an assistant gym instructor), Pawan Gupta (a fruit seller), Akshay Thakur (unemployed) and a seventeen-year-old juvenile. The group had been eating and drinking and driving the charter bus (which under the applicable laws was not allowed to operate) before the crime took place.
Ram Singh was discovered hanging from a ventilator (排氣扇) shaft in his cell (囚室) on 11 March. The authorities said it was unclear whether he himself or another took his life.
All the remaining adult attackers were sentenced to death. The only juvenile attacker was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, though he was described as the most brutal of the six accused.
4. The protests and consequences
As the gang rape sparked nationwide protests, the Indian government took steps to impose harsher punishment on rape convicts and to enhance the safety of women. In particular, it set up fast-track courts so that cases of sex assaults would be heard speedily. It also launched a hotline for receiving complaints about sex violence.
Furthermore, given the long history of sex violence of India, scholars have been trying to identify causes. Some of the frequently cited causes are the low status of women, the rigid class hierarchy (階級) of society, and gender imbalance. Some scholars suggest the fact that India was once a British colony has contributed to its rampant sex violence. Discriminated against in the colonial era, Indian men might be inclined to prove their manhood (男子氣概) by committing sex crimes. That sex offenders are not punished severely enough has also been cited as a reason.
