New Delhi: Â A bus stop in south Delhi’s Munirka area from where the young woman boarded a bus in which she was gang-raped turned Saturday into a memorial after she passed away in Singapore.
Flowers were placed and posters plastered on the bus stop.
Students and teachers of the nearby Jawaharlal Nehru University marched to the bus stop in silence. They were joined by residents and many others for a peaceful, silent expression of grief.
There was sullen anger.
The students pasted dozens of posters on the bus shelter. Many candles were lit too.
“We are not just sad but angry too. When will such atrocities stop? Are women not human,” asked Nidhi, a JNU student.
In her late 40s, Maya Acharya, who works with the Netherlands embassy in New Delhi, said she felt “ashamed” to be an Indian.
“Today I feel ashamed. People from other countries laugh at us. What kind of a democracy is this?” she asked.
Her husband, S.S. Acharya, recalled that they passed the spot on the night of Dec 16.
“We crossed this very spot that night to pick my daughter from the Delhi airport. She came alone from London to India. But here in Delhi I fear for her safety,” he said.
“I wonder how rapists get lawyers? Why do they get bail? The law needs to change,” said Priya Sengupta, another protestor.
Some vowed not to let the anger on the streets abate.
“These protests won’t end until justice is achieved,” pledged Jyoti, a resident of Chandigarh who now works in Delhi.
“I have been in Delhi a year now. Never before have my parents been so worried. They keep calling me all the time,” she said.
People, however, admitted that changing the social mindset was the biggest challenge.
“Every person needs to change,” said Surijit, a protester in his 20s.
The 23-year-old woman was with a male friend when she boarded a bus for Dwarka from a bus stop in Munirka.
Six men in the bus raped and tortured her for some 40 minutes before they dumped her on the roadside along with her male friend.
She died Saturday morning in a Singapore hospital after suffering multiple-organ failure.