On Sunday, police in the Northern state of Punjab, India, said they have arrested seven men for the gang rape of a woman on a bus. This crime follows a similar sexual assault of another young woman in New Delhi who was gang-raped by a group of men on a bus, including the driver, and died from her subsequent injuries, the Washington Post reports.
In the latest incident, police said a woman was taking a bus home to her village at around 5 p.m. Friday. She was the lone passenger on the bus for about 30 minutes. Police said the bus driver did not heed her request to stop at her village and instead stopped at a desolate spot further away.
"When the woman got down from the bus, she was carried away by the bus driver and conductor on a motorcycle to another spot and were joined by five other men," said Raj Jeet Singh, the senior superintendent of police in Gurdaspur in Punjab. She was dropped off the next morning near her village. "She came with her family to report rape on Saturday."
Friday's attack bore similarities to the high-profile case of a 23-year-old woman who was gang-raped and beaten inside a moving bus last month in New Delhi, and thrown out onto the street to die, along with a male friend who had tried to protect her. Jyoti Singh died of her injuries two weeks later at a Singapore hospital.
Elsewhere, in the trial of the New Delhi gang-rape assailants, which began last week, the deceased victim left a statement detailing the abuse she and her friend suffered at the hands of the defendants, reports the Daily News.
"The conductor closed the doors of the bus. He closed the lights of the bus and came towards my friend and started abusing and beating him. They held his hands and held me and took me to the back of the bus. They tore my clothes and raped me in turns. They hit me with an iron rod and bit me on my entire body with their teeth.
"They took all belongings, my mobile phone, purse, credit card, debit card, watches etc. Six people raped me in turns for nearly one hour in a moving bus. The driver of the bus kept changing so that he could also rape me," she said.
She and her friend had put up a fierce fight at the outset, she said, but their screams to passers-by outside went unheard and their attackers snatched their mobile phones. For half of her ordeal she was unconscious, she said, but each time she awoke in the darkness she was attacked again, she said.
Read more at the Washington Post and the Daily News.