RAPE, ASSAULT AND MURDER ON THE INCREASE IN INDIA

The hours-long gang-rape and near-fatal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi has triggered outrage and anger across the country as Indians demand action from authorities who have long ignored persistent violence and harassment against women. 

In the streets and in parliament, calls rose for stringent and swift punishment against those attacking women, including a proposal to make rapists eligible for the death penalty. As the calls for action grew louder, two more gang-rapes were reported, including one in which the 10-year-old victim was killed. "I feel it is sick what is happening across the country.It is totally sick, and it needs to stop," said Smitha, a 32-year-old protester who goes by only one name.

Thousands of demonstrators clogged the streets in front of New Delhi's police headquarters, protested near parliament and rallied outside a major university. Angry university students set up roadblocks across the city, causing massive traffic jams. Hundreds rallied outside the home of the city's top elected official before police dispersed them with water cannons, a move that earned further condemnation from opposition leaders, who accused the government of being insensitive. "We want to jolt people awake from the cozy comfort of their cars. We want people to feel the pain of what women are go through every day," said Aditi Roy, a Delhi University student.

As protests raged in cities across India, at least two girls were gang-raped, with one of them killed. Police on Wednesday fished out the body of a 10-year old girl from a canal in Bihar state's Saharsa district. Police superintendent Ajit Kumar Satyarthi said the girl had been gang-raped and killed and her body dumped in the canal. Police were investigating and a breakthrough was expected soon, Satyarthi said.

Elsewhere, a 14 -year old schoolgirl was in critical condition in Banka district of Bihar after she was raped by four men, said Jyoti Kumar, the district education officer. The men have been identified, but police were yet to make any arrests, Kumar said. Meanwhile, the 23-year-old victim of the first rape lay in critical condition in the hospital with severe internal injuries, doctors said.

Police said six men raped the woman and savagely beat her and her companion with iron rods on a bus driving around the city - passing through several police checkpoints - before stripping them and dumping them on the side of the road Sunday night. Delhi police chief Neeraj Kumar said four men have been arrested and a search was underway for the other two.

Rapes in India remain drastically under-reported  In many cases, families do not report rapes due to the stigma that follows the victim and her family. In other instances, families may decide not to report a rape out of frustration with the long delays in court and harassment at the hands of the police. Police themselves are reluctant to register cases of rape and domestic violence in order to keep down crime figures or to elicit a bribe from the victim.

In a sign of the protesters' fury, Khushi Pattanaik, a student, said death was too easy a punishment for the rapists, they should instead be castrated and forced to suffer as their victim did. "It should be made public so that you see it, you feel it and you also live with it. The kind of shame and guilt," she said.

AP