Twenty three-year-old Indian lass trapped in late night bus:

GANG RAPED

A23-year-old Indian lass and her boyfriend came out of a cinema after watching a movie - Life of Pi in Saket, South Delhi on that fateful Sunday night. They were anxiously awaiting to catch the last night bus to travel to their final destination - Dwarka, on December 16, 2012.

Since there were no normal buses at that time, they decided to board chartered bus at Munirka around 9.30 pm, driven by joy riders. There had been five passengers, excluding the driver. When the bus stopped at Munirka, one of the men, a minor, had called for passengers telling them that the bus was going towards Dwarka. They had no option but to board the bus to reach home before midnight.

Though the 23-year-old girl's boyfriend became suspicious when the bus deviated from its normal route and its doors were shut. When he objected, the group of six men already on board, including the driver, taunted the couple, asking what they were doing alone at such a late hour.

When the woman's boyfriend tried to intervene, he was beaten, gagged and knocked unconscious with an iron rod. The men then dragged the woman to the rear of the bus, beating her with the rod and raping her while the bus driver continued to drive. Medical reports later said that the woman suffered serious injuries to her abdomen, intestines and genitals due to the assault, and doctors said that the damage indicated that a blunt object (suspected to be the iron rod) may have been used for penetration.That rod was later described by police as being a rusted, L-shaped implement of the type used as a wheel jack handle. The minor, who had called for passengers and got the couple on board, was the most brutal attacker and had sexually abused his victim twice and ripped out her intestines with his bare hands.

The desperate lass attempted to fight off her assailants, biting three of the attackers and leaving bite marks on the accused men. The attackers, after beating the girl and raping, ejected both the victims from the moving bus. The driver allegedly tried to drive the bus over the woman, but she was pulled aside by her boyfriend.

The partially clothed victims were found on the road by a passerby at around 11 pm after a passerby phoned the Delhi Police after taking the couple to Safdarjung Hospital, where the female victim was given emergency treatment and placed on mechanical ventilation.

She was in critical condition with injury marks all over her body, Three days later - on December 19, 2012, the woman underwent her fifth surgery, removing most of her remaining intestine. Doctors reported that she was in stable but critical condition. On 21 December, the Indian government appointed a committee of physicians to ensure she received the best medical care.Exactly ten days after the merciless incident, the female victim remained intubated, on life support and in critical condition with a running a fever of 102 to 103 °F and internal bleeding due to sepsis, a severe blood infection that can lead to organ failure, was somewhat controlled.The ugly incident caught worldwide attention as a local cabinet meeting chaired by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Boxing Day of last year decided to fly her to Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital for further care. The Indian authorities were compelled to move the unfortunate victim to the multi-organ transplant specialty hospital after the local doctors found that the lass would not survive the next 48 hours.

The patient suddenly went into near collapse, which was later found to be a cardiac arrest, during the six-hour flight by air-ambulance to Singapore on December 27. The doctors on board the air-ambulance created an arterial line to stabilize her, but she had been without pulse and blood pressure for nearly three minutes and would never regain consciousness in Singapore.

Her condition became extremely critical on December 28 by 11 am as the chief executive officer of the Mount Elizabeth Hospital said that the woman was "fighting for her life. Her unsuccessful fight for survival ended on December 29, 13 days after she was brutally assaulted and gang raped. Her body was cremated on December 30 in Delhi under high police security.

The ugly incident which added a black mark to India, caught worldwide attention with the US Embassy in New Delhi and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon making statements on the need to end the violence against women.The student's mother also lashed out at India's sexist attitudes, attacking the many politicians and other public figures who've suggested she brought the rape on herself. One well-known spiritual guru even said she should have embraced her attackers as "brothers" to stop them assaulting her."Either they don't have daughters," her mother said, "or they are clearly backing these crimes." Her stance is also a sign of how it's simplistic to see the outcry over this brutal crime as being a kind of "Arab spring" by the more educated middle class.

The female victim was born and raised in Delhi while her parents were from a small village in Ballia District in Uttar Pradesh. Her father had sold his agricultural land to educate her, works as loader for a private company in Delhi. Neat stacks of medical text books, a sharply-designed carrier bag from a clothes store, an English novel and pairs of smart shoes in the draughty bedroom of the 23-year-old Delhi gang rape victim tell the story of a woman determined to make the leap to a middle class lifestyle for her and her family. If one visits the spartan house in a rundown Delhi neighbourhood where she lived with her parents and brothers, you could see how much they had put into helping her realise the dream, shared by so many hundreds of millions of Indians.

Many of the young and middle class Indians - men as well as women - who've joined protests after the incident said it was that sense of shared identity, as well as the shocking nature of the attack, that had propelled them onto the streets. The case led to days of violent protest across India and new laws against rape.

Ram Singh, the man described as the main suspect, was found dead in Tihar jail in March. Police said he had hanged himself, but defence lawyers and his family alleged he was murdered. A 33-year-old widower, he lived in a small two-room shanty in the Ravi Dass slum colony in southern Delhi.

He was the alleged driver of the bus on which the 23-year-old woman was raped and her male friend assaulted. He is remembered by his neighbours for being a troublemaker who frequently got involved in drunken brawls. He was the first person to be arrested for the gang rape that shocked India.

On Friday, an Indian court sentenced four men to death. Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta were found guilty on all counts earlier last week. Judge Yogesh Khanna said the case fell in the "rarest of rare category", rejecting pleas for a lighter sentence.

Judge Khanna said the attack "shocked the collective conscience" of India, and that "courts cannot turn a blind eye" to such crimes. "This case definitely falls in the rarest of rare categories and warrants the exemplary punishment of death," he added.

The men were convicted to death by hanging, and one of them, Vinay Sharma, broke down in tears as the verdict was announced. The father of the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the family was satisfied with the ruling.

"We are very happy. Justice has been delivered," he was quoted as saying.Earlier, protesters outside the court had demanded that the four men should be hanged. As they were escorted to the courtroom, the four men shouted to the crowd: "Brothers, save us!" They all deny the charges and can still appeal against the verdict to the Supreme Court and also ask the president for clemency - a process that could take years.

The defence lawyers argued during the trial that their clients had been tortured and some of their confessions - later retracted - had been coerced. There was unprecedented police security in Delhi on Friday.

Tough new laws were introduced in March which allowed the death penalty - carried out very rarely in India - to be handed down in the most serious cases of rape. Reacting to Friday's verdict, human rights groups said the death penalties would not end violence against women in India and that far-reaching reforms were needed to tackle the endemic problem.