The Indian lawyer for two of the four Delhi gang rapists sentenced to hang last week has criticised the victim's parents for allowing her to go out at night with a boy, and claimed he would have "burnt her alive" if she had been his daughter.

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The victim, a 23-year-old paramedical student, was attacked by five men and a juvenile on a bus she boarded with her boyfriend. The couple were on their way home from a popular Delhi shopping mall on December 16 last year. She was gang-raped and attacked with an iron rod. She died two weeks later in hospital.

The brutality of the attack provoked nationwide demonstrations and a debate on the scale of sexual violence against women in India. The victim, a dedicated student and dutiful daughter who wanted to help lift her family out of poverty, had symbolised millions of young women's determination to achieve equal rights in India.

AP Singh, a defence lawyer who represented two of the convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, claimed she had had premarital sex and said: "If my daughter was having premarital sex and moving around at night with her boyfriend, I would have burnt her alive. All parents should adopt such an attitude."

Ranjana Kumari, a women's rights campaigner, said that his views were "Taliban-like". She added: "He should be arrested and his licence to practice in court should be withdrawn."