Delhi Rape Victim's Mom Makes Brave Announcement

'Her name was Jyoti'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 17, 2015 4:13 AM CST
Delhi Rape Victim's Mom Makes Brave Announcement
Indian women carry placards and banners as they offer prayers for a gang rape victim in New Delhi, India, on Jan. 2, 2013.   (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Three years to the day after her daughter received fatal injuries during a brutal gang rape in Delhi, Asha Singh told a crowd that she wanted the world to know her daughter's name. "I feel no shame in naming my daughter. I say this in front of you all that her name was Jyoti Singh," the mother said, per AFP, which notes that rape victims tend to be shunned in India and cannot legally be named. The 23-year-old victim's name was already public knowledge—her father spoke out to give other women courage weeks after the 2012 attack—but it was still a "display of extraordinary courage" for her mother to publicly name her, the Indian Express reports.

"There is no need for us to feel any shame. It is the perpetrators of heinous crimes who must feel ashamed of themselves," Asha Singh told the Delhi crowd, urging them to also refer to her daughter as Jyoti. Four men were sentenced to death for the attack and one of them has already died in custody. A fifth attacker, who was 17 at the time of the crime, is just days away from release after serving the maximum three-year sentence in a facility for juvenile offenders, reports the BBC. Jyoti's father told reporters that he opposed the release. "Almost every day we read about even small girls being raped," he said. "If criminals like him are let off, I fear what will happen to society." (In an interview, the driver of the bus on which Singh was raped blamed Singh herself.)

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