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Protesters hold placards as they
shout slogans during a protest to mark the first anniversary of the Delhi gang
rape, in New Delhi December 16, 2013. (Reuters/Adnan Abidi)
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An Indian man sentenced to death for
his part in a gang rape and killing a woman in New Delhi says they would have
let her live if she hadn’t fought back. Mukesh Singh aired his views in a
documentary: "She should just be silent and allow the rape."
Singh was driving the bus when the
brutal gang rape took place in the Indian capital in December 2012. He was one
of four men who took part in the horrific ordeal, which the 23 year-old
physiotherapy student never recovered from. She died 13 days later in a
hospital in Singapore. Two years and three months later,
Singh still shows no remorse for an attack that left a family in tatters and
led to mass protests on the sub-continent at the lack of women’s rights, according to RT.com.
The report continues:
Singh told British documentary maker
Leslee Udwin that if their victim had not fought back she would not have been
killed. The bus driver said: "Then
they would have dropped her off after 'doing her,'" as reported by
AP.
While conducting the interview, Udwin
said she had read out a list of all the injuries that the woman had suffered
when speaking to 28 year-old Singh. However, he showed no emotion.
"He
is almost like a robot. I tried everything, every trick I knew to try and make
him have a tear in his eye or something to see if there was any remorse," she said, according to AFP.
The 23 year-old had been out with a
male friend in New Delhi when they were tricked into getting onto the bus,
which the men had taken for a joyride. The attackers savagely beat up her
friend, before taking turns to rape the woman, penetrating her on numerous
occasions with a metal rod, which left her with severe internal bleeding.
Despite the fact the man is facing
death by hanging, he still blames the woman and alleges she wanted the men to
rape her.
"A
girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy," Singh said, according to the transcripts from the interview, which were
published on Tuesday. "A decent
girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night .... Housework and housekeeping is
for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing
wrong clothes," AP cites him as saying.
Singh added that he and his friends
had decided to rape the 23 year-old in order to teach women a lesson that they
should not be out late at night. "She
should just be silent and allow the rape."
He also mentioned that the death
penalty for rape crimes will just make the situation worse for any future
victims. "Now when they rape,
they won't leave the girl like we did. They will kill her," Singh
said.
Singh and three other men were
convicted of rape and murder in 2013, after initially confessing to carrying
out the brutal attack. However, they later retracted their statements, saying
the police had tortured them. They are currently appealing their death
sentences, while India’s Supreme Court will hear their cases.
In addition to the four men, a
17-year-old teenager was sentenced to three years in a reform facility after
being found guilty in August 2014 of participating in the rape. As he was
technically a minor under Indian law when the crime was committed, three years
was the maximum possible sentence he could receive.
The public outcry that followed the
incident, with mass street protests, saw the Indian government double prison
terms for rapists to 20 years. The new legislation also makes it a crime for
police officers to refuse to open cases when complaints are made.
According to the National Crime
Records Bureau, one woman gets raped every 22 minutes in India. The situation
does not seem to be improving. In May 2014, two teenage cousins were murdered
in the small village of Katra Shahadatganj, in Uttar Pradesh.
The girls went missing when they
went into nearby fields to relieve themselves, as they had no bathroom at home.
Their bodies were found the following day, hanging by their necks on a mango
tree. The post-mortem examination confirmed they had been gang-raped before the
killing.
Despite the soul searching that has
taken place in Indian society, there is still a long way to go before attitudes
towards women change.
"Indian
society is such that it thinks rape is normal, that rape is a part of a woman's
fate," sociologist Shiv Visvanathan told AFP.
"Our attitude to rape is as if the victim
asks for it and the male is nowhere in sight of blame - it is the circumstance,
the provocation and whole series of symptoms, but men are never blamed,"
added Visvanathan.
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