NEW DELHI – A teenager from a north Indian village who was reported to have been dragged from a field and raped by a group of men died of her injuries at a hospital in New Delhi on Tuesday, Sept. 29, triggering nationwide outrage again after years of what experts describe as a gang rape epidemic in India.
The 19-year-old woman had been transferred to the hospital just a day before, two weeks after she was gang-raped and mutilated by higher-caste men near their village in the Hathras District in Uttar Pradesh state. She was a Dalit, the lowest caste in India’s Hindu hierarchy.
The police chief in Hathras, Vikrant Vir, said that four men had been arrested on charges of gang rape and murder.
But justice is unlikely: Of the tens of thousands of rape cases reported in India annually, only a handful result in prosecutions, National Crime Records Bureau figures show.
Reports said the victim was cutting grass to feed the family’s five milk buffalo when she was taken away by a group of upper-caste men on Sept. 14.
Her tongue was cut and her spinal cord was broken after she was dragged by her neck with a rope, her brother Kumar said. (The New York Times)
