'Police took two hours to take us to hospital'
Victim’s friend recounts horror tale
The friend of the Delhi gang-rape victim, on Friday appeared on television, narrating the callousness of passersby, police and the hospital on the night of December 16.
“We were lying in semi-conscious condition in a pool of blood and around 15 people were just watching for around half an hour. No one came up with even a piece of cloth,” he told a private news channel. The two had been stripped naked and dumped on the roadside at Mahipalpur after the gang-rape in a moving bus.
Three police control room vans arrived when someone called up the PCR, but instead of taking them to hospital immediately, the policemen fought among themselves for half an hour over jurisdiction issues.
“Even after the police arrived, it took them over two hours to take us to hospital. They were fighting over jurisdiction.
The police did not even help to carry the victim into the PCR van; I carried my badly injured friend to the PCR van on my own. In the hospital also we were not given clothes to cover ourselves,” he said.
The young man said he was taken to the police station after a few hours and was asked to help investigators to locate the bus. “I was kept at the police station for four days in an injured condition, ” he said.
The software engineer recounted that he had fought to save the girl but was pinned down by the assailants.
“They beat us up, hit us with an iron rod, snatched our clothes and belongings and then threw us off the bus on a deserted stretch from where we had boarded the bus. They drove around for nearly two and a half hours. We were shouting, trying to make people hear us.
But they switched off the lights. We tried to resist them. Even my friend fought with them, she tried to save me. She tried to dial police control room number 100, but the accused snatched the mobile. They wanted to kill us,” he said.
He said that the Delhi Police commissioner and the government should take moral responsibility for failing to prevent such a heinous crime.
When he met his friend in hospital, she said she didn’t want the six accused to hang, but be burnt alive.
He also expressed anger towards the sub-divisional magistrate who complained that she was harassed by police while taking down the statement of the victim.
He said his friend struggled for breath during the four hours and was continuously coughing while giving her statement, but an issue was made of it uselessly.
He said there should be change within every human being. “If there is the slightest morality left with lawmakers, they should bring strict laws so next time this does not happen with anyone,” he said.
