Police in India's capital have arrested 11 members of a family, including juveniles, over allegations that they gang-raped and publicly shamed a young woman to avenge the death of a boy.
The victim's head was shaved and her face covered in black ink. She was forced to wear shoes tied together around her neck as the boy's family paraded her in public in New Delhi's Kasturba Nagar area on Wednesday.
Police said the woman, 20, was attacked by the relatives of a boy, 14, who took his life by jumping in front of a train allegedly because she had spurned his advances.
The perpetrators also recorded the assault on their mobile phones. Police said they rushed to the spot immediately and rescued the woman from the mob that was parading and beating her.
Delhi Police spokesman
"We have arrested nine people and detained two juveniles involved in the gang rape of the woman. We seized the videos of the incident and identified two people from the videos," Delhi Police spokesman Chinmay Biswal told The National.
"We suspect the involvement of more people and are investigating the matter."
The woman was bruised but is in a stable condition. Her medical reports were pending to confirm the sexual assault, police said.
The victim's younger sister told local news outlets that the woman was hounded by the boy's family after his suicide last November.
The boy was "asking her to leave her husband and marry him instead. But she did not do the same," the sister told a local newspaper.
From the day after he took his life on November 12, the boy's family members "started troubling and blaming us for his death", she said.
Residents said they heard a commotion on the narrow streets of the poor district as the gang pushed and beat the woman.
"We heard noises and came out to see that a woman was being paraded and beaten," a resident told a news outlet.
Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal claimed that woman was brutally gang-raped and had terrible bruises all over her body.
Ms Maliwal said some female members of the boy's family were also involved in the crime. She demanded police protection for the victim's family.
