New Delhi:
The Delhi Police has arrested the fifth person accused in the gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student in a moving bus on Sunday. He was detained along with another man in western Uttar Pradesh last night. Four of the six accused in the case have already been arrested earlier this week.
Yesterday, the male friend of the victim, who was also thrashed repeatedly by the accused with an iron rod, identified one of the men in an identification parade. He reportedly took a minute to identify the accused out of 11 men who were brought in front of him.
Meanwhile, the 23-year-old girl who is battling for her life bravely after the brutal gang-rape, yesterday asked her family members, "Have they been caught?"
Sources said the girl, who remained critical but stable, cannot speak as she has a tube in her mouth and communicates by writing on paper. "She is aware that the media has taken up the case. The girl asked her family whether the accused have been caught," they said.
Doctors say their immediate and foremost concern was to get the young woman - whose almost entire intestine has been surgically removed - out of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and make her stable.
The friend of the medical student has been helping the police in its investigation. The young man was attacked by a group of drunk and leering men, who then raped his friend in a bus in Delhi on Sunday night. He shared his version of what happened in a Delhi court on Wednesday.
Four men, including the driver of the chartered bus, have been arrested in the case.
On Sunday night, the girl and her male friend, both from Uttar Pradesh, boarded a bus after watching a movie. The six men, who were already on board, began harassing the girl. He tried to stop them. They turned on him with an iron rod, striking his head over and over. She then tried to rescue him. Furious, the six men began hitting her. Then they took turns raping her while one of them kept the bus circling on South Delhi's roads.
(With inputs from PTI)