The death of a 20-year-old woman who was reportedly dragged for almost an hour by a car after a vehicle collision in Delhi has provoked outrage and calls for justice.
The woman was driving home from work in the early hours of New Year’s Day when her scooter and a car collided. News reports say the car driver and four passengers, all male, did not stop, dragging her body for miles through the streets of outer Delhi.
The event has shocked the country and dominated headlines in India, where road crash deaths are among the highest in the world. About 150,000 people are killed on the roads each year.
Delhi’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, on Wednesday called the incident an example of “extreme cruelty”.
“Even if a [piece of] polythene or a piece of paper gets stuck in a car, the driver finds out. They stop the car and check. This accident is an example of extreme cruelty … To think that the drivers did not realise that a woman was stuck under the car is nothing but cruelty and ignorance,” Sisodia said, in comments reported by Indian Express.
The woman was the sole breadwinner in her family and her mother was unwell, he added. Sisodia promised support for the family.
An autopsy said that “shock and haemorrhage as a result of antemortem injury to the head, spine, left femur and both lower limbs” was the provisional cause of death. It found 40 “antemortem external injuries” on the victim.
Her family has alleged she was sexually assaulted, saying her body was unclothed when it was discovered. Police said the autopsy did not find any injuries suggesting sexual assault.
The men said they had not realised the woman’s body was caught under their car, saying their windows were closed and they were playing loud music. They have been charged with culpable homicide and causing death by negligence, the BBC reports.
Police have faced questions over their response. Deepak Dahiya, a witness who called police, told NDTV that he tried to chase the car and called the police more than 20 times to raise concerns. “I couldn’t stop the car as it was too dangerous. But I followed it and described it to the police. The police didn’t react – maybe they didn’t believe me. If they had been proactive, they could have caught the suspects earlier,” he said. The car kept making U-turns, he added.
Indian Express reported that police did not find the woman’s body until two hours after the first call to their control room, despite approximately 18,000 police and security personnel on the streets for New Year’s Eve. Police sources told the newspaper that five calls were made about the incident.
Earlier this week, hundreds of people protested outside a police station to demand justice, while members of the Aam Aadmi party (AAP), which runs Delhi’s government, gathered outside the lieutenant governor’s office, an appointee of the federal government, calling for his resignation.
The AAP has said one of the accused is a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party, and that police have covered this up.
Delhi’s lieutenant governor, Vinai Kumar Saxena, said earlier this week on that he was shocked at “the monstrous insensitivity of the perpetrators”, adding, “all aspects are being thoroughly looked into”.
