Manesar gangrape: Five year since Jyoti Singh's rape, women remain vulnerable

The gangrape of a 23-year-old woman -- whose child was flung to a pavement and killed -- highlights India's continuing tragedy. Almost five years after Jyoti Singh's rape and subsequent death shook the nation's conscience, women continue to be vulnerable in the streets.

A string of brutal sexual assaults on women and minor girls -- at least ten such cases were reported from north India over the last one month -- exposes the sordid underbelly of cities and towns in the country.

The widespread outrage that followed the December 16, 2012, rape and murder of Singh -- named Nirbhaya, or the fearless one, by the media -- led to a change in laws on violence against women in the country.

But the May 29 incident, when the young mother was allegedly raped by three men in the industrial area of Manesar, abutting the bustling "millennium town" of Gurgaon, shows that little has changed out in the streets.

The woman, whose nine-month-old daughter was killed when the men allegedly smothered her and threw her tiny body on the road, said she had been raped for four hours after the men offered a lift in a tempo.

She approached the police, who refused to file a case. The incident came to light on June 5, when the media reported it. An outcry followed, which led to the arrest of the three men and the suspension of a woman sub-inspector. Under the law, those convicted of gangrape have to be sentenced to at least 20 years of rigorous imprisonment, which can be extended to life.

Despite the law, similar brutal incidents continue to haunt women, from dark alleys in residential neighbourhoods to desolate highways and fields, as they go about their daily lives. On May 11, the decomposed and mutilated body of a woman, who had gone missing from Sonepat on May 9, was found near Rohtak. She had been gangraped and brutally murdered, police said.

An autopsy revealed her skull bones had shattered into pieces and "some sharp-edged objects may have been inserted in her private parts". Jyoti Singh had been similarly violated.

On May 25, it was a highway to hell for four women who were allegedly raped by a group of five criminals at gunpoint in a field off the Yamuna Expressway. One of the men travelling with the women was shot dead when he objected to the assault.

The incident took place at night when eight people were travelling to Bulandshahr to meet a relative in a hospital.

A 27-year-old woman was allegedly gangraped in front of her husband, who was tied to a tree and gagged, in the Sahaswan area of Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district. The incident took place on May 22 when the woman was returning home from a health clinic with her husband.

Two days later, a 30-year-old woman was shot at when she resisted an alleged molestation and rape attempt by two men in Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district. Many of the victims of sexual assault are minors.

A 7-year-old girl was allegedly gangraped in a remote village of Allahabad on May 25. "The girl was picked up from her house in Amreha Budawan village while she was sleeping next to her mother. She was brought back home by villagers who found her lying in a pool of blood in the nearby fields, where the assailants appear to have dumped her after the sexual assault," a police officer said.

On May 20, a minor girl was allegedly raped by her 70- year-old neighbour in Khanna, about 45 kms from Ludhiana.

Cases of sexual assault and rape of minor girls have also been reported in the last month from Haryana's Yamunanagar, the Jewar area of Greater Noida and Sikar in Rajasthan, among other places.

"It is unfortunate that such a horrific gang rape (and the subsequent death of the victim) was required to trigger the response needed for the preservation of the rule of law the bedrock of a republic democracy," said the Justice JS Verma committee, set up after Singh was raped in a moving bus and died in a hospital days later.

"Let us hope that this tragedy would occasion better governance, with the State taking all necessary measures to ensure a safe environment for the women in the country, thus preventing the recurrence of such sexual violence," it said.