11 Sep 2013

Four men convicted of Delhi gang rape

12:27 am on 11 September 2013

Four men have been found guilty of the fatal gang rape of a medical student in the Indian capital Delhi last December.

The 23-year-old woman was brutally assaulted on a bus and died two weeks later in hospital in Singapore.

Her death led to days of huge protests across India in a wave of unprecedented anger.

The case forced the introduction of tough new laws to punish sexual offences and sparked a national debate on the treatment of women.

A juvenile who took part in the attack was last month sentenced to three years' detention and a sixth man committed suicide in his cell in March, the BBC reports.

The men could be sentenced within a day. Their lawyer says they could be hanged for the murder conviction.

The verdicts close a chapter on a crime that triggered soul searching in many sectors of India about the treatment of women there.

Asia Pacific study

A new study suggests that almost a quarter of men surveyed in six countries in Asia and the Pacific have raped at least one woman, mostly within marriage or a relationship.

The United Nations research, published in the Lancet Global Health Journal, surveyed 10,00 men.

In Papua New Guinea, more than six out of 10 men surveyed admitted committing rape; in western Indonesia it was almost half of all men in the survey.

It was least common in urban areas of Bangladesh.