Horrific details have emerged about the gang-rape and murder of another young woman in India. The latest attack comes just a week after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of four men convicted of the notorious 2012 brutal Delhi gang-rape.
The twenty-year-old woman was gang-raped and murdered in the city of Rohtak in the northern Indian state of Haryana allegedly by her “jilted lover” and his friends, reported the Hindustan Times, citing police.
An autopsy of the victim showed that the woman’s skull had been shattered and sharp objects may have been inserted into her private parts.
“The findings suggest that it was a brutal rape and murder,” said Dr SK Dhatterwal, head of the forensic medicine department at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak, where the post-mortem was conducted.
It’s believed the woman’s face was also smashed with a brick before the suspects drove a car over her body to make her unidentifiable.
The victim’s body was discovered by a passerby Thursday, according to the Times of India. Stray dogs had bitten off part of her face and body, police said.
The woman was reportedly kidnapped from Sonipat, some 40 kilometers away from Rohtak on May 9. Her parents reported the abduction to police.
The family says that the chief suspect was a neighbour who had been harassing their daughter for the past year and recently put pressure on her to marry him which she refused.
They claim that Haryana police ignored a complaint lodged against the man about three months ago. However, police said they have not found any written complaint of the kind in their records. Police also say the family claimed they had reached a “compromise” with the harasser.
Two of the accused including the prime suspect have been arrested.
The gruesome assault and murder has been compared with the gang-rape of a girl on a bus in Delhi in 2012 which attracted global attention to India’s rape culture.
The victim who became widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless” received justice last week when India’s supreme court upheld the decision to hang the four men convicted of her rape and murder.
"The brutal, barbaric, and demoniacal conduct of the convicts shook the conscience of humanity and they don't deserve leniency ," the top court said.
This latest heinous crime has sent shockwaves through India. Congress president Sonia Gandhi said it highlights the need to revisit the issue of women’s safety.