New Delhi: Mukesh Singh, one of the convicts in the infamous Delhi gang rape of 2012, has claimed that his victim was to be blamed for her brutal rape and murder.
In an interview to BBC, he said that women who went out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of gangs of male molesters.
His victim, Jyoti Singh, a 23 year old female physiotherapy intern, was returning home from an evening at the cinema with a male friend when they were offered a lift by a gang of six men in a private mini-bus. She was brutally raped and mercilessly beaten with iron bars, sparking widespread protests with rising clamour for stricter law against sexual violence across country.
Showing little remorse for his crime, Singh said "You can't clap with one hand – it takes two hands. 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."
While describing her death as an accident, Mukesh also claimed that had she not tried to defend herself, the gang would have spared her the beating.
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 'doing her', and only hit the boy."
This reinforces the existing belief among many Indian men where women are still being observed as an object of sex and humiliation.
Singh, whose death sentence is currently on appeal, also claims that executing him and the other convicted rapists will endanger future rape victims.
While the Indian courts made a harsh example of the gang, passing death sentences that are now otherwise rarely used, campaigners say that otherwise not enough has changed.
Earlier, Singh had claimed that he was driving the bus when abduction took place and denied any involvement in the attack. But the investigators found strong DNA evidence against him and his claim was rejected by the court.
while the judge said that the case had "shocked the collective conscience" of India, Singh appears to be unfazed.
