Trial of Delhi gang-rape suspect has begun: Prosecutor

NEW DELHI: Five men went on trial Monday over the fatal gang-rape of student on a bus in Delhi as the victim's father urged the special fast-track court to deliver swift justice and sentence her attackers to hang.

With the case being held behind closed doors and subject to a gagging order, it was left to one of the prosecutors to announce the start of the case to reporters packed outside the sessions court in New Delhi.

"The trial has begun," Dayan Krishnan told AFP. "The chargesheet has been submitted before the judge and the arguments will begin on January 24."

The trial is being held in a special "fast-track" court in the capital set up to circumvent India's notoriously slow justice system, with the victim's family leading widespread calls for quick closure on the horrifying case.

The start of the trial was delayed until late in the afternoon Monday by a failed application to overturn the gagging order while a lawyer for one defendant also sought to move the trial out of New Delhi.

The father of the 23-year-old victim said her family would rest only once the culprits were convicted and hanged and he urged judge Yogesh Khanna to complete his work quickly.

"We have finished the mourning rituals for my daughter in the village but our mourning will not end until the court passes down its verdict. My daughter's soul will only rest in peace after the court punishes the men," the father told AFP.

"It is the duty of the court and the judges to ensure that the final order to punish all the accused is handed down quickly and all the men are hanged.

"No man has the right to live after committing such a heinous crime."

The assault last month on the medical student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sparked mass protests across India -- in particular in New Delhi which has been dubbed the country's "rape capital" over the incidence of such attacks.

Though gang-rapes and sexual harassment are commonplace in India, the case has touched a nerve, leading to an outpouring of criticism of the treatment of women in Indian society.

Sonia Gandhi, president of India's ruling Congress party, on Sunday condemned the "shameful" social attitudes which she said led to crimes like gang-rape. The New Delhi case had "shaken the entire country," she added.

The five men face murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping and other charges, with prosecutors expected to demand the death penalty. A sixth suspect, who claims he is 17, will be tried by a separate juvenile court.

Defence lawyers say they will enter not-guilty pleas and accuse police of torturing the adult defendants -- aged between 19 and 35 -- to confess.

The woman, a promising student whose father worked extra shifts as an airport baggage handler to educate her, suffered massive intestinal injuries during the assault on the bus in which she was raped and violated with an iron bar.

She died 13 days later after the government airlifted her to a Singapore hospital in a last-ditch bid to save her life.

In a move that could lead to a significant delay to proceedings, the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider a request to transfer the trial to a venue outside New Delhi.

M.L. Sharma, counsel for defendant Mukesh Singh, said it would be impossible for his client to receive a fair hearing in the city where the December 16 attack took place.

The application for a transfer will be considered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

V.K. Anand, a defence lawyer for another suspect called Ram Singh, asked the judge to lift the reporting ban on proceedings, but his request was refused.

"Crime is against society at large. Society has the right to know what happens in the court," he argued when speaking to AFP.

Senior prosecutor Rajiv Mohan, who has vowed to seek the death penalty for the "heinous" crime, has said that he has "sufficient evidence" against all the accused to secure a conviction.

Police have gathered DNA evidence allegedly linking the defendants to the attack while the victim's hospital-bed declaration before her death and testimony from her 28-year-old companion are also set to be crucial.

India says it only imposes the death penalty in the "rarest of rare cases". Two months ago, it hanged the lone surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks -- the country's first execution in eight years.

Delhi gang-rape case moved to fast-track court: Lawyer

NEW DELHI: The case against five adults accused of gang-raping and murdering a student in New Delhi was moved on Thursday for trial in a fast-track court, a lawyer for one of the defendants said.

"The magistrate has committed the case to the sessions court which is fast-track," Sadashiv Gupta, the lawyer for fruit-seller Pawan Kumar, told reporters outside a district court in south Delhi. The court would hold its first hearing on the case on January 21, Gupta added.

Delhi gang-rape victim equally responsible, suggests Asaram Bapu

NEW DELHI: Spiritual leader Asaram Bapu courted controversy for suggesting that the victim of the brutal sexual assault was equally responsible for the crime and saying the girl could have called her assailants brothers and begged them to stop.

Asaram's remarks on the gangrape of the 23-year-old girl sparked condemnation across the political spectrum and from women's bodies today with the BJP saying it was "regrettable, deeply disturbing and painful".

Addressing his followers recently, Asaram said that when the girl encountered six drunk men "she should have taken God's name and could have held the hand of one of the men and said I consider you as my brother and should have said to the other two 'Brother I am helpless, you are my brother, my religious brother.'

She should have taken God's name and held their hands and feet...then the misconduct wouldn't have happened."

He also went on to say, "Galti ek taraf se nahi hoti hai (mistake is not committed from one side)." The girl was gangraped on the night of December 16 in a moving bus and died nearly a fortnight later at a Singapore hospital.

"The accused were drunk. If the girl had chanted hymns to Goddess Saraswati and to Guru Diksha then she wouldn't have entered the bus...," he added.

BJP spokesperson Ravishankar Prasad said Asaram is a religious guru and that the country looks upto him. "His statement is regrettable, deeply disturbing and painful," he said.

"For him to make the statement in relation to a crime which has shocked the conscience of the country is not only unfortunate but deeply regrettable," he added.

An aide to Asaram sought to downplay the controversy over the remarks. Neelam Dubey said the remarks were made at a religious discourse in Delhi in the context of how one should invoke God's name to avoid incidents like crimes against women. Some reports said the event was held in Rajasthan.

Dubey said Asaram was trying ta drive home the point that incidents like the gangrape of the girl could have been avoided by reciting mantras, by reciting names of Gods. "If she(victim) would have taken God's name or recited a mantra God inside her might have suggested her to how to avoid such crimes," she said, seeking to explain Asaram's remarks.

"He was giving that idea to his devotees. He was citing the gangrape incident to say one should use commonsense to avoid such incidents," she added.

No logic in shifting gang-rape survivor, say Delhi doctors

As the 23-year-old gang-rape survivor struggles for life in Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital, doctors in the national capital said moving her abroad in such a condition was "unusual". There was "no logic" behind it, they said.

"I can't understand the logic behind it, or rather it is unusual to transfer the girl from Delhi to Singapore when the patient has suffered a cardiac arrest, as I have been informed by the media," Samiran Nundy, chairman, department of surgical gastroenterology and organ transplantation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told IANS.

The 23-year-old survivor was brutally beaten and raped by six men on a moving bus in Delhi Dec 16. She now fights for life with severe multiple intestinal, abdominal and other injuries. She was flown to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital late Wednesday night.

"My suggestion would have been to stabilise her in India and get her out of the crisis; then do her intestinal transplant later. One cannot think about intestinal transplant at this moment. First, the infection spreading in her should be stopped, then one can think about transplant," Nundy said.

Another senior doctor from the trauma centre of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, requesting anonymity, said: "Maybe it was politically logical to shift the patient. But as a doctor, I would say it is totally insensitive to shift the patient with her infection spreading. Shifting now, that too within a few hours of cardiac arrest, is thoughtless."

Mount Elizabeth Hospital, where the woman is being treated, on Thursday confirmed that she had a cardiac arrest in the early hours of Wednesday.

Nundy also said that in case of intestinal transplant, chances of survival are five years in 60 percent of cases, and one year in 80 percent.

Meanwhile, doctors treating the woman at the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore have said she had suffered "significant brain injury" and continued to be in an "extremely critical condition".

Besides a prior cardiac arrest, the woman also had infection in her lungs and abdomen, "as well as significant brain injury", Kelvin Loh, the hospital's chief executive officer, was quoted as saying by the Straits Times.

"The patient is currently struggling against odds, and fighting for her life," he said.

He said a multi-disciplinary team of specialists has been working round-the-clock to treat her since her arrival Thursday. They were "doing everything possible to stabilise her condition over the next few days", he added.