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while the weather also turned chillier and windy in northern India yesterday.
Students and citizens continued to stage high profile protests in the city demanding fast justice for the victim who struggled for her life for nearly 13 days before yielding her breath at a Singapore hospital far away from home on Saturday.
Delhi Police on Sunday said it had finalised a 1 000-page charge sheet against the six thugs involved in the gang-rape and planned to submit it to court on Thursday.
Investigators said they will seek the death penalty for the accused. Many Indians have cancelled New Year celebration plans to tone them down and the loud explosion of firecrackers to meet the coming new year at the usual time will be at least reduced.
“The New Year is set to begin on a note of brief mourning and introspection,” said the daily Times of India.
Delhi Gymkhana, one of the oldest clubs in India, has cancelled a musical festival and asked its 7 000 members to come and light candles in solidarity with the victim.
The gang-rape has mobilised Indian society over the past two weeks to ask for justice for the country’s women who are reportedly subject to brutality, rape and even murder on a daily basis.
Two new cases of murder and rape of women were reported over the past two days in India, highlighting the seriousness of the situation.
Archana Kumari, an acid attack victim and also a 23-year-old, came to Delhi from Bihar, eastern India, to tell the hell she went through after being attacked.
“I am sick and tired of what men do to women and how no one stops them. I want to show everyone that I am not yet dead,” she was quoted as saying by the daily The Telegraph, during a demonstration at Jantar Mantar, the government appointed street for public protests.
The gang rape was expected to dominate the talks when friends met and dined yesterday evening, as many were to spend a sleepless night, lighting candles for the girl victim.
In a front page article entitled “Why I am culpable” published on the same Kolkata newspaper, well-known journalist Sujan Dutta said, “I learnt at the barricades that the personal is the political. So I am culpable. Culpable of the gang-rape and murder of a co-citizen.
“I am culpable because I am a man. Because I have encouraged lewd jokes, sexist jibes and dirty talk about women,” he wrote.
“I am so sorry that I am a part of this society and culture. I am sorry that I am a man. I promise I will fight with your voice. I will respect women, so that I gain my daughter’s respect,” said India’s best-known male movie star Shah Rukh Khan. — Xinhua.
Online Reporter