Mother Of One Abducted, Gang-Raped And Paraded Through Jeering Crowd In Barbaric Revenge Attack

A 20-year-old mother-of-one was abducted, gang-raped, and tortured by the family members of a teen boy, who blamed the woman for his death by suicide.

Almost exactly under the framed photo of a man hung on the wall, labeled "Late Ayush Nahariya. 12.11.2021" was a handful of hair on the ground, that belonged to the victim, identified only as Nithya.

The attackers chopped the young mother’s hair, blackened her face with soot, and weighed down her neck with a garland of shoes before parading her through the streets of India’s capital city.

A jeering crowd, that sadly included teen boys and girls, slapped her with their slippers, while onlookers clapped and cheered as she was being dragged through the streets of east Delhi's Kasturba Nagar on Jan. 27.

A disturbing video of the barbaric incident has gone viral on social media. Responding to the video, women's rights activist Yogita Bhayana said: "The incident in Delhi's Kasturbanagar left me speechless."

"Some women kept walking her around for two hours! All the women involved must be arrested and severely punished."

Eleven people – including seven women, two minor boys, and two men – all members of the same family – have been arrested so far on charges of gang rape, sexual assault, hurt, kidnapping, illegal confinement, and abduction, among others, police said. A search is underway for the absconding suspects, the force added.

According to the police, the attack was allegedly an act of revenge by the family members of the teenage boy who took his own life last November.

The boy reportedly killed himself by coming under a speeding train after the woman, who is married and has a three-year-old son, turned down his romantic advances.

"The boy committed suicide in November last year and his family blamed the victim (woman) for it. The family alleged that it was because of her that the boy took the extreme step. To exact revenge on her, the family members allegedly abducted her. They wanted to teach her a lesson," a senior police official had said

Following his death, the boy's family members began threatening the woman and her family, forcing them to move home.

"[He] fell in love with her," the victim's 18-year-old sister, Aditi, told NewsLaundry. "He used to keep calling and asking her to leave her husband and be with him. She would always refuse."

"They blamed my sister for Ayush’s death," said Aditi, referring to Ayush’s family, "and started taking out their anger against us."

"I used to work at a shop. They came there and created a scene and I stopped going there," she said. "They would come home and tell me that they will rape me. Once they came with sticks also."

On the morning of Jan. 26, Aditiwas on her way to her sister’s home to hand over a sack of wheat when the attackers followed her in an auto-rickshaw.

Aditi has identified four men, Manjeet, Karan, Akshay, and Lucky, who she said are her neighbors, according to reports.

"When I reached, my sister came down," Aditi told the independent news agency.

"Immediately, the men put her in their auto and sped away. They snatched my phone as well. I grabbed my sister’s baby and rushed back home."

The woman was then taken to the suspects’ family home, where she was brutally beaten and raped, according to reports.

R Sathiyasundaram, the deputy commissioner of police at Shahdara police station said the victim told the investigators that the attackers "put their private parts on her mouth to defame her".

"The men did this to her in front of their mother, aunt and other women in the family," the officer told the news station.

Meanwhile, Aditi headed back to her own house, but failed to locate her sister there.

""I was so scared," she said, "but within a few minutes, I started hearing commotion outside. I hid inside the house and watched everything through a crack in the wall."

"They had chopped all her hair and made her face black with kajal, I think," she said. "My sister was crying but no one was helping her."

She then ran to a neighbor’s house and called the police. The officers arrived within "10-15 minutes", "rescued" Nitya and took her to the Shahdara police station, Aditi said.

The police then conducted a medical examination, recorded the victim’s statement, and put her in a "safe house in Delhi".

"The medical examination of the girl is complete," he added. "We have taken her statement and we are awaiting a full report of it. The victim is currently at a safe house in Delhi."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has condemned the incident and demanded justice.

"How did the criminals get so much courage?" Kejriwal tweeted. "Delhiites will not tolerate such heinous crime and criminals at any cost."

Kavita Krishnan, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and a prominent feminist, said, "The stripping and parading, face-blackening are shameful practices of caste-based atrocities against persons of oppressed castes."

"In the Kasturba Nagar incident, though both the accused and the victim are from the same community, the gender atrocity used the practices learned from caste atrocities. This is very much a gender atrocity where an entire neighborhood thinks it is OK to lynch a woman because she did not reciprocate love for a man," Krishnan told Al Jazeera.