India woman, set ablaze by men accused of raping her, dies

A 23-year-old woman, who was set on fire by men accused of raping her at a village in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district, died in a hospital in New Delhi last night.

The woman, who suffered 90 per cent burns after she was set ablaze on Thursday, died of a cardiac arrest at the Safdarjung Hospital at 11:40pm Indian time, reports our New Delhi correspondent.

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"She suffered cardiac arrest at 11:10 pm and we tried for half an hour to resuscitate her but she could not survive and at 11:40 pm she died," said Dr Shalabh Kumar, Head of Department (Burns and Plastic), Safdarjung Hospital.

The woman, who was brought to Delhi by an air ambulance on Friday evening, had told the police that she was thrashed and stabbed before being set on fire by five men near her village in Unnao, including two she had accused of raping her and their fathers.

The victim was on her way to a court hearing in her rape complaint when the men surrounded her near a railway station.

She, in her burnt state, was conscious all the way to the hospital, where she gave a statement to the police identifying all five attackers.

One of the two men accused of raping her last year was granted bail 10 days back. The other man had been on the run. All the five men involved in the Thursday morning attack were arrested within hours of the crime.

The woman had said in her statement to Sub Divisional Magistrate Dayashankar Pathak that she was attacked when she reached Gaura turn near her home.

Harishankar Trivedi, Ram Kishore Trivedi, Umesh Bajpai, Shivam Trivedi and Shubham Trivedi set her afire, she had said.

She alleged that Shivam and Shubham Trivedi had abducted and raped her in December 2018. The FIR, however, was registered in March.

In a tweet, the Uttar Pradesh police had said the victim had lodged an FIR alleging that she had been raped between January 19 and December 12, 2018, by one of the accused on the pretext that he would marry her.

The sight of the woman running for help down an Unnao road sent shivers down the spines of local people. Ravindra, a local resident sitting by the roadside, said he called the police and the woman herself talked to them on phone.

The incident of setting the woman in Unnao on fire came a day after a 25-year-old veterinarian was raped and set ablaze near Hyderabad.