Mumbai gang-rape case: brave survivor says 'rape is not the end of life'

Mumbai: All five men wanted for the gang-rape of a young photojournalist in Mumbai have been arrested.

After the first suspect was arrested yesterday, two others were arrested by the police yesterday. Two more were arrested today, one from Delhi.

The sexual assault in the heart of Mumbai, usually considered one of India's safest cities for women, has triggered outrage across the country.

The survivor, a 22-year-old who was interning at a local English magazine, remains in hospital and is recovering well from internal and external injuries, said doctors attending to her. "Rape is not the end of life; I want to get back to work," she is reported to have said to Nirmala Samant Prabhawalkar, a member of the National Commission for Women, who visited her in hospital.

Chand Sheikh, the first suspect to be arrested, has been incorrectly described by the police as a 19-year-old, his grandmother alleged. She said she will go to court if she has to in order to establish that he is 16, which would entitle him to a trial in a court for juveniles. (Read)

Sarana Bai met NDTV at the small home were she lives with Chand in a slum that's a 15-minute walk from Shakti Mill, where the young woman was assaulted with such unrelenting savagery.

She was on assignment with a male colleague in South Mumbai when two members of the gang approached them and struck up a conversation. An hour later, the journalists decided their assignment was complete. As they were heading out, the two men returned along with a third. They accused the couple of being involved in a murder that had taken place at the mill. The woman was separated from her colleague during the conversation. After he was tied up, the three men phoned another two to join them, the police said. (Read: Girl's colleague took cops around crime spot, identified rapist)

The woman has told the police that her attackers held a broken beer bottle above her head to deter her from shouting for help. The young woman's mother called her twice and she was  ordered to answer it without giving away a hint of the nightmare she was going through. (Read: Broken beer bottle held over Mumbai gang-rape survivor's head)

The attack has underscored how vulnerable women remain in India's biggest cities despite the introduction of a tougher anti-rape law to punish sexual crimes that was introduced after a young woman was fatally gang-raped on a bus in Delhi in December, provoking massive street protests.  (Watch: The Mumbai incident reminded me of my child, says Delhi braveheart's mother)