XPost: alt.business.accountability, rec.sport.football.college,    
   alk.politics.misc   
   XPost: misc.survivalism   
   From: biden-communism@denverpost.com   
      
   NEW DELHI — A teenager from a north Indian village who was   
   dragged from a field and raped by a group of men died of her   
   injuries at a hospital in New Delhi on Tuesday, triggering   
   nationwide outrage again after years of what experts describe as   
   a gang rape epidemic in India.   
      
   The 19-year-old woman, whom Indian law prohibits naming, had   
   been transferred to the hospital just a day before, two weeks   
   after she was gang-raped and mutilated by higher caste men near   
   their village in the Hathras District in Uttar Pradesh State,   
   her family said.   
      
   The police chief in Hathras, Vikrant Vir, said that four men had   
   been arrested on charges of gang rape and murder. Prime Minister   
   Narendra Modi said that “strictest action” should be taken   
   against the attackers, according to a Twitter post by Yogi   
   Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh’s top elected official and a leader of   
   Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.   
      
   But justice is unlikely: Of the tens of thousands of rape cases   
   reported in India annually, only a handful result in   
   prosecutions, National Crime Records Bureau figures show.   
   Activists say the true scope of the problem is far worse, as   
   many cases are never reported because of the stigma of sexual   
   violence in India.   
      
   When action is taken against suspects, it is often by vigilantes   
   or by police officers acting extrajudicially, in killings that   
   are usually widely praised but that also point out the justice   
   system’s inability to deal with rampant sexual violence.   
      
   The woman was Dalit, on the lowest rung of India’s Hindu caste   
   hierarchy. On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters from the Bhim   
   Army, a party advocating for the rights of Dalits, thronged the   
   Delhi hospital where the woman was treated and clashed with the   
   police.   
      
   A leader of the Bhim Army, Chandrashekhar Azad, urged Dalits   
   across India to take to the streets to demand that the attackers   
   be hanged.   
      
   The anger was fueled by another rape and death that disclosed by   
   the police on Thursday, also in Uttar Pradesh. In that attack in   
   the district of Balrampur, a 22 year old woman was raped by two   
   men, then died of her injuries while on her way to the hospital.   
   Police said that the two suspects had been arrested.   
      
   The 19-year-old woman was cutting grass to feed the family’s   
   five milk buffalo in Hathras when she was taken away by a group   
   of upper-caste men on Sept. 14, according to her brother.   
      
   Her tongue was cut and her spinal cord was broken after she was   
   dragged by her neck with a rope, the brother said. He said that   
   arrests came only after days of complaints to the police. His   
   sister was initially treated at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh   
   before being transferred to New Delhi.   
      
   Mr. Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said in   
   another tweet that a special investigative team had been formed   
   to take on the case and that a report would be delivered within   
   a week.   
      
   After the woman died in the hospital in New Delhi, her body was   
   taken back to Uttar Pradesh, where the police seized her body in   
   the early hours Wednesday and took her to be cremated without   
   the family, ostensibly to try to keep the case quiet, the   
   brother said.   
      
   “They took the body by force, assaulted the family members, and   
   cremated my sister in the night itself,” he said. “Police did   
   not allow us near the cremation place.”   
      
   The Hathras police did not immediately comment on the family’s   
   accusations. But the district magistrate, Praveen Kumar Laxkar,   
   told reporters on Wednesday that it was untrue that family   
   members were not allowed at the cremation.   
      
   Dalits are particularly vulnerable to caste-based   
   discrimination, and Dalit women are singled out for sexual   
   attacks thousands of times a year, according to human rights   
   organizations.   
      
   Gruesome reports of rape, often followed by retaliatory violence   
   if victims or their families speak out, have become painfully   
   familiar in India. Whether a rape report rises above the din to   
   receive national notice is often determined by class and caste   
   dynamics.   
      
   A student’s shocking gang rape aboard a bus in New Delhi in   
   2012, which later resulted in her death, galvanized a nationwide   
   protest, with demonstrators clamoring for reform. But the   
   country’s overburdened court system continues to move slowly.   
   Four men convicted in the 2012 case were hanged earlier this   
   year, after exhausting their appeals.   
      
   The police killing of four suspects in the alleged gang-rape of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)