The 3-year-old daughter of an Indian woman, who was raped by two men aboard a bus, recounted the grisly details of her mother’s attack and her baby brother’s death.
On March 7, the mother of two was returning to Rampur from visiting her sister when she was attacked in Sheeshgarh, a village in the Bareilly District of Uttar Pradesh.
Initially, it was unclear exactly what occurred, as the 28-year-old woman was unable to give police a statement after she was found unconscious the next day on the side of the road, her daughter and dead infant by her side.
The 3-year-old, who hid out of sight of the assailants, told authorities that her mother was attacked after all the other passengers had left the bus. The men forced the mother to drink alcohol and during the scuffle her 2-week-old brother was killed. ”The Times of India“ reported that the two men—a private bus driver and the bus conductor—threw the newborn baby from his mother’s lap.
Yamuna Prasad, the police superintendent of the area where the attack occurred, says the two suspects have been arrested and charged. Indian Penal Code “Sections 376 D (gangrape)” and “304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder)” have been cited by the “The Times of India“ as the charges.
“The Times of India” also quoted Madhu Garg of the All India Democratic Women’s Association saying that this attack “was ghastlier than Delhi’s Nirbhaya case” due to the fact that “the accused killed the victim’s 14-day-old infant.”
In December 2012, a 23-year-old student was gang-raped on a Delhi bus. Two weeks later she succumbed to injuries in a Singapore hospital. The attack and subsequent death sparked widespread protests across India. Four of the suspects were sentenced to death in September 2013. Three years to the day after the Delhi incident, the victim’s mother released her daughter’s name as Jyoti Singh.
