Since the brutal rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi several weeks ago, there have been any number of snapshots of the victim, including this from the New York Times India Ink blog:
Portrait Emerges of Victim in New Delhi Gang Rape
She was studious, ambitious and about to be married.
Her parents had sold off land and scrimped on food to pay for her and her brothers’ education. She came to India’s capital to pursue dreams of being a doctor, from a tiny farming village that regularly suffered drought and floods.
Details about the life of the 23-year-old New Delhi gang rape victim, who died on Saturday, began to trickle out over the weekend, as relatives and neighbors spoke publicly for the first time since the woman was raped by several men in a moving bus, assaulted with an iron rod and dumped on the side of a highway.
For nearly two weeks, as she battled for life, first at a hospital in New Delhi and then in Singapore, hundreds of Indians poured onto the streets in angry protests praying for her demanding justice. On Sunday, as the victim was cremated in a private ceremony in New Delhi, a picture emerged of her life, her family and her dreams.
But no portrait the hardworking staff has seen is as vivid as this one from Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:
New Delhi Attack: The Victim’s Story
It was early afternoon just before Christmas in India’s capital, and a young woman spoke to her friend on the phone, eager to get together.
“Wake up, wake up,” she told him. “It’s already very late—1 o’clock.”
The two agreed to meet. And so began an innocent outing that set in motion a killing that would horrify the world.
The two met at Select Citywalk, a trendy mall where New Delhi’s 20-somethings gather to spend pocket change and enjoy a small taste of the glamour promised by India’s economic rise. The young woman—her family’s nickname for her was “Bitiya,” which means daughter—admired a long coat in a shop window, her friend said in an interview. He thought he would like to buy it for her later. Then, they took in a movie, “Life of Pi,” sitting in the same seats where, on an earlier visit, they had watched “Gulliver’s Travels” together.
A few hours later, the pair were dumped, naked and bleeding, from a private bus along a highway. Both had been viciously attacked with an iron rod, according to police, and the young woman so violently raped that she died two weeks later, on Dec. 29.
What follows is a heart-rending chronology of that horrific night as told by friends and family members.
It’s also a stunning multimedia piece of reporting. Well worth your attention.
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