Outside Mumbai, Reports of Rape Buried in Pages of Newspapers

By NY times

It was a familiar scene in the lower house of the Indian Parliament on Monday as Sushma Swaraj, the Lok Sabha leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, demanded the death penalty for the five men who allegedly gang-rapeda 22-year-old photojournalist in Mumbai last week while she was on assignment for an English-language magazine.

A similar outcry ensued for weeks in the national legislature after a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was brutally violated by six men on a moving bus in December. She later died from the injuries. The gang rape sparked nationwide protests demanding better security for women, which forced the government to toughen laws on sexual violence. But little seems to have changed despite the new legislation.

As the photojournalist recuperates in a Mumbai hospital and all the five suspects have been arrested, national attention continues to focus on the case. However, according to one media report, through an anonymous letter the victim’s family has appealed for privacy.

A paragraph in the letter reads:

I have one small request to all of you. Please continue to respect the privacy of my daughter and me in this most trying time of our lives and give us the breathing space we so desperately need by not visiting our residence. We live in a society where such actions will only make it more difficult for us to get back to normal life. This can also impact my daughter’s life and become an impediment in our struggle to regain our sanity and composure….

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