One of the men involved in the 2012 Delhi gang rape has sparked outrage after claiming his unfortunate victim was to blame for her sexual assault.
“A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” Mukesh Singh said in an interview from the jail where he is currently incarcerated.
The gang rape of the 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi had shocked the world and prompted protests from women in India seeking protection. But Singh said women who went out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of gangs of male molesters.
“You can’t clap with one hand – it takes two hands,” he said, in an interview for a BBC documentary.
Not even remotely remorseful for his action, Singh shifting blame on the victim herself for the act said, “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.”
Further, describing the killing as an ‘accident’, Singh 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.”
He elaborated if the girl dubbed Nirmai by the media (Fearless) and her male friend who she was going back home with, not resisted the attempt he and his five other gang members would not have beaten her up leading to her death.
Singh, a slum-dweller who was 26 at the time of the attack, was driving the bus when the abduction occurred and denied involvement in the attack itself. However, the court rejected his claims adding there was strong DNA evidence against him and he could have stopped the act.
With his death sentence currently on appeal, Singh said the executions will only further put lives of future rape victims at risk.
“The death penalty will make things even more dangerous for girls,” he says. “Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her, she won’t tell anyone.’ Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl. Death,” he said
