Mukesh Singh
March 2: One of the men convicted of the notorious Delhi gang rape of 2012 has prompted outrage by claiming that his victim was to blame for her brutal sexual assault and murder.
In an interview from jail, Mukesh Singh said that women who went out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of gangs of male molesters. "A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy," he said.
The 23-year-old victim was returning from an evening at the cinema with a friend when the six-strong gang offered them a lift in a bus. She was raped and frenziedly beaten with iron bars, prompting widespread outrage.
In an interview for a BBC documentary, Mukesh claimed that had the girl and her friend not tried to fight back, the gang would not have inflicted the savage beating, which led her to die from her injuries two weeks later.
Describing the killing as an "accident", he said: "When being raped, she shouldn't fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they'd have dropped her off after (assaulting her), and only hit the boy."
The interview, which BBC Four will air on its Storyville programme to coincide with International Women's Day this Sunday, will be seen by women's rights groups as compelling evidence of the appalling attitudes shown by many Indian men towards women.
While the courts made a harsh example of the gang, passing death sentences that are now otherwise rarely used, campaigners say that not enough has changed.
Mukesh, a slum-dweller who was 26 at the time of the attack, was driving the bus when the abduction occurred.
He denied involvement in the attack, but his claims were rejected by the court, which said there was strong DNA evidence against him, and that even if he had not taken part, he should have intervened.
Mukesh appeared to show little remorse. "You can't clap with one hand - it takes two hands," Mukesh said 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."
Mukesh, whose death sentence is currently on appeal, also claimed that executing him and the other convicted rapists would endanger future rape victims.
"Before, they would rape and say, 'Leave her, she won't tell anyone'. Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl," he said.
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
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