Six suspects arrested in new rape of a bus passenger in India

Police say they have arrested six men accused of repeatedly gang-raping a woman onboard a bus in the north of India. The assault is said to have taken place near the city of Amritsar.

Police officer Raj Singh said the 29-year-old woman was the only person on the vehicle as she tried to make her way home to her in-laws’ village in Punjab on Friday evening. According to the Associated Press, the driver would not stop at the woman’s village and instead drove her to a remote location.

The officer said the driver then took the woman to a building where he was joined by five of his friends. The men took turns in raping the woman throughout the night, said Mr Singh, before they dumped her close to her village the following morning. There, she went to her relative’s home and told two women what had happened.

The attack on the woman is just one of dozens of rapes highlighted by  the Indian media since the 16 December attack on the Delhi student that triggered national protests and a demand for more efficient and more sensitive policing. As it was, police in Punjab revealed the name and address of the Amritsar rape attack victim in a briefing to the media.

Meanwhile, in another incident in western India, reported by the Press Trust of India (PTI), police arrested a 32-year-old man on Saturday for allegedly abducting, raping and killing a nine-year-old girl.

Police told the PTI the suspect allegedly kidnapped the child on December 28 last year in the town of Shirdi in Maharashtra state before dumping her body near the railway station, where it was discovered on Friday night.

The suspect was apparently released from prison in May after his sentence for the rape and murder of another girl was commuted from 17 to 10 years for good behaviour.