Thousands of Indian women and men participate in peace march with placards carrying pro-women slogans to Mahatma Gandhi memorial, Rajghat, in New Delhi, India

The father of the 23-year-old gang rape victim has paid tribute to his ‘fiercely determined’ daughter in his first interview since the attack happened.

In an interview with the BBC he revealed how his daughter who died last week from injuries sustained in a gang rape on a Delhi bus, wanted to be a doctor and promised to lift the family from their poverty.

He said: ‘She was very adamant about whatever she wanted.

‘When we used to stop at a sweetshop on the way to school she was adamant about wanting a sweet and even the shopkeeper had to relent.

‘It was the same in high school. She wanted to be a doctor and said it was only a matter of a few years and that when she was a doctor (all our suffering) it will end.’

Her father moved the family to Delhi from a rural part of India in order to improve her chances of realising her ambition of a career in medicine.

The dream was cut short on December 16 when she was attacked by six men on a Delhi bus and died from her injuries.

The event was organized by the Delhi Government, Delhi Commission for Women to pay homage to the 23 year old Delhi gang-rape victim and for women safety

India’s people have been outraged by the sickening gang rape attack and have taken to the streets all over the country

In a show of solidarity with the victim, thousands of Indian women and men took  part in the biggest protest yet since they started following the student’s death last week.

The protesters carried pro-women slogans to the Mahatma Gandhi memorial, Rajghat, in New Delhi, this morning.

The event was organized by the Delhi Government, Delhi Commission for Women to pay homage to the 23 year old Delhi gang-rape victim and for women safety.

On Monday IIndian police arrested a man who tried to blow up the house belonging to the driver of a Delhi bus on which a 23-year-old was gang-raped, as lawyers refuse to defend the accused rapists.

He was found with two homemade bombs outside the house of bus driver Ram Singh in south Delhi’s RK Puram area. Two other men escaped arrest.

Hearings are expected to begin on Thursday at the Saket district court in south New Delhi, where police will formally present a 1,000-page charge sheet against Singh and five others accused of raping the victim on December 16.

Anger: Protests continued in Delhi on New Year’s Day as it was revealed that the victim was thrown under a bus by her attackers, police sources said

Message: An Indian man arranges posters on a road during a protest to mourn the death of a gang rape victim in New Delhi

‘We have decided that no lawyer will stand up to defend the rape accused as it would be immoral to defend the case,’ Sanjay Kumar, a lawyer and a member of the Saket District Bar Council, told AFP.

It comes as the Indian government proposed to name a revised anti-rape law after the victim, a move her family referred to as an ‘honour’.

The father and brother of the girl said that ‘if the government names the revised anti-rape law after her, we have no objection and it would be an honour to her’.

Kumar said the 2,500 advocates registered at the court have decided to ‘stay away’ to ensure ‘speedy justice’, meaning the government would have to appoint lawyers for the defendants.

Five men are expected to face charges including rape, murder and kidnapping in the Saket court, with the prosecutor likely to seek the death sentence.

A sixth suspect is believed to be 17 years old, meaning he would be tried in a juveniles’ court, but police are conducting bone tests to determine his age.

The rape victim died at the weekend after 13-day struggle to survive injuries so severe that the majority of her intestines had to be removed.

She was gang raped and violated with an iron bar on a bus before being thrown from the moving vehicle at the end of a 40-minute ordeal.

Tense: The body of a young woman who was gang-raped and brutally beaten on a bus in India’s capital was cremated but her family say she could have survived

Aware: The body of the tragic student victim was cremated amid tight security, police said

As protests about violence against women grow louder in India, a 17-year-old school student has come forward to claim she was sedated and raped by two men in the upscale south Delhi colony of Safdarjung Enclave on New Year’s Eve.

The two men in their late 20s were arrested and sent to Tihar Jail.

The men, identified as Rajesh and Naveen Jain, work in IT companies, police said. They were arrested Monday night and sent to Tihar after they were produced at the Saket court.

The victim had met one of the accused on a social networking site.
She met the man on Dec 31 at a south Delhi market and then asked her to accompany him to a flat in Safdarjung Enclave. There he was joined by his friend, police sources said.

The two are then said to have sedated her and took turns in raping her. They also warned her of dire consequences if she revealed anything.

Indian politicians facing sexual assault charges may be suspended from office in the wake of the New Dehli bus rape scandal.

The country’s highest court is to rule on an application to ban regional and national MPs on sex charges.

Poignant: White lilies could be seen in the back of the ambulance as the body was transported through the city

As part of that campaign, Chief Justice Altamas Kabir agreed to hear a petition this week from retired government administrator Promilla Shanker asking the Supreme Court to suspend all politicians who are facing prosecution for crimes against women.

She also asked the court to force the national government to fast-track thousands of rape cases that have languished in India’s notoriously sluggish court system for years.

Six state MPs are facing rape prosecutions and two national ones are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape.

In the past five years, political parties across India nominated 260 candidates awaiting trial on charges of crimes against women. Parties ran six candidates for the national parliamentary elections facing such charges.

‘We need to decriminalise politics and surely a serious effort has to be made to stop people who have serious charges of sexual assault against them from contesting elections,” said Zoya Hasan, a political analyst.

Several thousand women joined a silent march to Gandhi’s memorial in the capital in memory of the victim, holding placards demanding “Respect” and “Justice.” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit joined the women for a prayer session for the victim.

The government has set up a task force to monitor women’s safety in New Delhi and to review whether police were properly protecting women. It had set up two earlier bodies to look into the handling of the rape case and to suggest changes in the nation’s rape laws.

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