An alleged rape victim in northern India who was set on fire on Thursday on her way to a court hearing in the case she filed died in a hospital in New Delhi, officials said yesterday.
The woman was attacked by a group of men in Uttar Pradesh, including two of the five men she had accused of gang rape last year who were out of custody on bail.
Five men were arrested in connection with the burn attack.
Photo: AFP
The 23-year-old woman sustained extensive injuries and was airlifted from Uttar Pradesh to Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, where she died late on Friday of cardiac arrest, said Shalab Kumar, head of the hospital’s burn unit.
Congress Party General-Secretary Priyanka Gandhi faulted the Uttar Pradesh government, led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for failing to provide the woman with security, even after a similar case in the state in which a woman who accused a BJP lawmaker of rape was severely injured in a vehicle hit-and-run incident.
Separately, a top Indian rights group yesterday launched an investigation into a police shooting of four rape-murder suspects, after accusations that they were gunned down to assuage public anger.
Police said that they shot the four suspects, who had been in custody for a week, early on Friday after they snatched officers’ guns during a re-enactment at the crime scene organized by detectives.
Police were still at the scene outside Hyderabad in southern India yesterday as motorists stopped their cars on the busy highway to look and take photos with their phones.
Others have expressed horror, with one Indian Supreme Court lawyer calling it “murder in cold blood” and Amnesty International saying the “alleged extrajudicial execution” should be investigated.
The operation was overseen by a police officer involved in two similar incidents, including when three acid attack suspects were killed in a forest in 2008, the Indian Express daily reported.
Late on Friday the High Court in the southern state of Telangana, where the shooting happened, ordered that the bodies be preserved until tomorrow and that their autopsies be filmed.
A team from the National Human Rights Commission was expected at the scene later yesterday.
The commission said that it was concerned the killings would “send a wrong message to society.”
“If, the arrested persons were actually guilty, they were to be punished as per law pursuant to the directions of the competent court,” it said in a statement.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The