×

Our award-winning reporting has moved

Context provides news and analysis on three of the world’s most critical issues:

climate change, the impact of technology on society, and inclusive economies.

Brutal rape, murder of a woman in south India sparks protests

by Anuradha Nagaraj | @anuranagaraj | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 3 May 2016 14:13 GMT

In this 2013 file photo demonstrators hold candles during a candlelight vigil to mark the first death anniversary of the Delhi gang rape victim, in New Delhi, India. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee

Image Caption and Rights Information

Protesters gather outside hospital where the woman's body has been taken, holding placards demanding justice for the victim

By Anuradha Nagaraj

CHENNAI, India, May 3 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hundreds of people in southern India took to the streets on Tuesday to demand a fast investigation into the rape, murder and mutilation of a woman whose death has drawn comparisons with a 2012 gang rape that forced a change to the law.

Indian police are looking for a suspect seen leaving the home of the 30-year-old woman who suffered multiple stab wounds and had her intestines pulled out during the attack in Ernakulam, Kerala, investigators said.

Protesters gathered outside the hospital where the woman's body had been taken, holding placards demanding justice for the victim, who belonged to the Dalit group, traditionally the lowest ranked in India's caste system.

"Neighbours have come forward and said they heard noises and saw a man leaving the woman's home on April 28, the day of the murder. It appears to be someone she knew and we are following the leads we have," district police chief Yatish Chandra told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The brutality of the case has evoked comparisons in the local media with the gang rape and torture of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi in 2012, which sparked nationwide protests.

India toughened its anti-rape laws in response to the outcry following the 2012 attack, but rape, acid attacks, domestic violence and molestation are common.

Last year India passed legislation lowering the age at which someone can be tried for rape and other crimes to 16.

Women's rights and violence against women has been under the spotlight since the 2012 killing and last week's attack underlines the particular vulnerability of women from lower castes, activists and experts said.

"At least 35 to 40 percent of families in Kerala are headed by women. Even the mother of this young Dalit woman was bringing up two daughters in a vulnerable space with no security," J Devika of the Centre for Development Studies, a research institute, in Trivandrum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"That is disturbing and as is the fact that no one cared until it hit the headlines five days later," Devika said.

(Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

-->