Convict blames victim for Dec 16 Delhi gang-rape

A convict in the gruesome December 16, 2012, Delhi gang-rape case has blamed the 23-year-old victim, who died from her injuries 13 days after the fatal sexual assault, for attracting unwanted attention.

Mukesh Singh, one of gang-rapists, said women who go out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of molesters.

In an interview from jail for a BBC documentary to be aired on March 8, Mukesh Singh said: “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy.”

The convict was also quoted by British daily The Telegraph as saying that had the victim and her male friend not tried to fight back, the gang would not have resorted to a savage beating.
Describing the gruesome incident as an “accident”, Mukesh Singh said: “When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they would have dropped her off after ‘doing her’ and only hit the boy.”

The interview will be aired by BBC Four on its Storyville programme “India’s Daughter” on Sunday to coincide with International Women’s Day.

“You can’t clap with one hand - it takes two hands,” he was quoted as saying in the interview. “A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night, doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good.” He also claimed that executing him and the other convicted rapists will endanger future rape victims.

One of the attackers in the December 16 gang-rape case was found dead in jail in March 2013, while a juvenile member of the gang was sentenced to three years in a reform home.
Four attackers, including Mukesh Singh, were convicted and sentenced to death last year. Judge Yogesh Khanna said the victim was “tortured till the very end” and the case fell into the “rarest of rare category”, which justified capital punishment.

The Supreme Court has stayed the death sentences and is considering appeals filed by the four men. Mukesh Singh, who was 26 at the time of the attack, was driving the bus.