“We were without clothes. We tried to stop people passing by. Several auto rickshaws, cars and bikes slowed down but no one stopped for about 25 minutes. Then, someone on patrolling, stopped and called the police,” he told India’s Zee News in an interview on Friday night.
According to Bernama and Reuters, he told the interviewer that nobody, including the police, gave them clothes or called an ambulance. “They were just watching us,” he said, adding that after repeated requests, someone gave him a part of a bed sheet to cover his friend.
"If you can help someone, help them. If a single person had helped me that night, things would have been different,” he said.
The victim’s boyfriend rued the fact that three Police Control Room (PCR) vans arrived at the scene after they had been laying on the street for about 45 minutes, but wasted time in arguing under which police station’s jurisdiction the case fell.
"We kept shouting at the police, 'please give us some clothes' but they were busy deciding which police station our case should be registered at," he said.
Narrating the details of the incident on the horrific night of Dec 16, the 28-years old software engineer said: “My friend was bleeding profusely. But instead of taking us to a nearby hospital, they (police) took us to a hospital that was far away.”
He had to carry his badly injured friend to the PCR vans on his own as the police officers didn’t help them because the girl was bleeding profusely.
According to Reuters, Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat has however told them that GPS records show the first police van reached the scene four minutes after it was called and took the man and the woman to hospital within 24 minutes.
All round indifference
The young women, who was brutally raped by six men on a moving bus, died on Dec 29 due multiple organ failure.
The male friend said he and the woman were attacked after an evening out watching a film.
“From where we boarded the bus, they (the attackers) moved around for nearly two and a half hours.
“We were shouting, trying to make people hear us. But they switched off the lights of the bus," he said, according to a transcript of the interview.
When
they were thrown out, they pleaded with passers-by for help, he added
in the studio interview, a blue metal crutch leaning on his chair.
"There were a few people who had gathered round but nobody helped. Before the police came, I screamed for help but the auto rickshaws, cars and others passing by did not stop," the man added.
“Nobody from the public helped us. People were probably afraid that if they helped us, they would become witnesses to the crime and would be asked to come to police stations and courts,” he told the channel.
“Even at the hospital, we were made to wait and I had to literally beg for clothes. I borrowed a stranger’s mobile and called my relatives, but just told them that I had met with an accident. My treatment started only after my relatives came,” he said.
The young man, who looked composed while recounting the details, said he was hit on the head.
“I was not able to walk. I was not able to move my hands for two weeks,” he said.
The attackers snatched their mobiles, tore off their clothes in order to destroy any evidence of the crime, and hit them unconscious with a metal rod before throwing them of the bus.
“After throwing us off the bus, they tried to mow us down but I saved my friend by pulling her away in the nick of time,” he said.
"I never had thoughts of leaving her and running away. Even an animal would not do that. I have no regrets. But I wish I could have done something to help her. I do think, sometimes, about why I didn't get an auto, why did I take that bus."
Fateful bus ride
The man, who suffered a fractured leg and other injuries in the attack, is currently at his parents' home in rural northern India where he is taking time out from his job at a software firm in New Delhi.
"What can I say? The cruelty I saw should not be seen ever. I tried to fight against the men but later I begged them again and again to leave her," he told AFP in an interview by phone from Gorakhpur, a town in Uttar Pradesh state.
He described their decision to get on a private bus after watching the movie as the "biggest mistake" of his life. He said several rickshaws had refused to drive them back to the victim's home in a New Delhi suburb.
Once in the bus, he was attacked and his 23-year-old girlfriend was gang-raped by six allegedly drunk men, including the driver, who also violated her with an iron bar causing immense internal damage that would lead to her death last weekend.
"I was not very confident about getting into the bus but my friend was running late, so we got into it. This was the biggest mistake I made and after that everything went out of control," said the man further on the Zee TV interview.
The driver of the bus allegedly then made lewd remarks and his accomplices joined him "to taunt" the couple.
The boyfriend told the driver to stop the bus, but by then his accomplices had locked the two doors.
"They hit me with a small stick and dragged my friend to a seat near the driver's cabin."
After that the "driver and the other men raped my friend and hit her in the worst possible ways in the most private parts of her body."
"I cannot tell you what I feel when I think of it. I shiver in pain," he said.
The horrifying crime has appalled India and brought simmering anger about widespread crime against women to the boil amid angry calls for better protection by police and changed social attitudes.
The police have arrested the six suspects for the crime - five adults and a minor believed to be aged 17 - who were charged with murder, rape and kidnapping in a city court on Thursday.
Horrific hospital reception
The man also related how the government hospital they were taken to had failed to take into account his injuries and mental trauma.
"I was treated like an object by the police... They wanted all the help to solve the case even before getting me the right treatment. Nobody witnessed the trauma I suffered," he said.
He said he was also "not satisfied by the treatment provided to the victim by the doctors" at the Safdarjung Hospital, a government-run institution.
"I requested the police to shift her to a private hospital; the cleanliness, hygiene of the place just did not feel right," he said.
"I am not a doctor but I could say that there was a lot of delay. Treatment was not given to both of us at the right time."His girlfriend died in a specialist hospital in Singapore hospital after a 13-day struggle to survive injuries so grievous that her intestines had to be removed.
She underwent three major surgeries and suffered a cardiac arrest in India before being flown to Singapore for treatment.
Two doctors from a top private hospital who were part of the team who monitored her condition in India denied that the public hospital had failed in its duty to the victims.
"Anywhere in the world the prognosis was not very good to start with," said Yatin Mehta, a highly experienced critical care specialist at the private Medanta hospital.
"The Safdarjung doctors did a pretty commendable job," he added, echoing comments from cardiac surgeon Naresh Trihan, who was also involved in later efforts to save the woman.
‘More brutal than animals’
Meanwhile, the man said he only came to know what the attackers have done to her friend when she gave her statement to the lady sub-divisional magistrate.
“I couldn’t believe what they did to her. Even when animals hunt, they don’t mete out such brutality to their prey.
“She faced all of this and told the magistrate that the accused should not be hanged but burnt to death.”
“When I had met my friend in the hospital, she was smiling. She was able to write and was positive. I never felt that she did not want to live,” he said.
When asked what suggestions he would like to give in order to ensure that such incidents don’t recur, the victim’s friend said, the police should always try to ensure that the victims are taken to the hospital as soon as possible and not look for government hospitals.
He also pointed out that one cannot change mindsets by lighting candles. "You have to help people on the road when they need help.”
In a recent development, Hindustan Times yesterday reported that a case has been filed against Zee News for revealing the identity of the rape victim through the interview.
"A case under Section 228-A of the Indian Penal Code was filed against Zee News at police station Vasant Vihar," it reported the Delhi Police spokesman Bhagat saying.
Reuters meanwhile also reported how the Zee News interview has caused a renewed outpouring of anger on Twitter.
"After reading and watching the Zee News interview I'm absolutely shocked and ashamed of being an Indian," said @BarunKiBilli.
The man called for the protests to continue, but said he wished people had come to his friend's aid when she needed it.
"You have to help people on the road when they need help," he said.
- Agencies
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