The woman, a physiotherapy student, was last night fighting for her life in hospital. She had been travelling home from watching a film at a shopping mall in the south of Delhi when she and a male friend were attacked by a group of drunk men on a largely empty bus.
\nPolice say six men attacked the couple and took turns to rape the woman as the bus toured the city’s streets on Sunday. Tinted windows and curtains kept them hidden and prolonged the woman’s suffering as the rapists attacked her and her friend with an iron bar before throwing them out of the bus unconscious on a city flyover.
\nTelevision news channels quoted police sources saying the perpetrators had abused the woman for being out at night with a man and said they would “teach her a lesson.” Her condition was described as critical amid reports that she is on a ventilator and that her intestines were so severely ruptured surgeons had removed them to prevent gangrene.
\nThousands of protesters took to the streets of Kanpur and Delhi to demonstrate outside the Indian parliament, the Delhi chief minister’s office and at the police headquarters to demand urgent action to protect women in the “rape capital of India.”<\/p>\n