India’s Daughter

The men beat her friend unconscious and gang-raped her for an hour as the bus rode round the highways. After raping her, the men shoved an iron rod into her vagina. The youngest of the rapists (17) put his hand inside her and pulled her intestines out.

The couple were thrown out of the moving bus, naked and bleeding. They lay on the roadside for almost an hour, pleading for help. Against all odds, Jyoti survived for 2 weeks, but finally died after seven operations. Her ordeal and death sparked protests and riots in the streets of Indian cities and has led to changes in the aw and the first glimmers of a change of mindset.

The film examines the societal values in which brutality against women is so widespread. We follow the events leading up to the incident and the aftermath: The arrests, hopeless attempts to save the victim’s life, the suicide in prison of one of the rapists, the protests and riots, and the political ramifications of the case.

A rape occurs every 18 minutes in Delhi, known as ‘the Rape Capital of the World’ and every 20 minutes in India as a whole. But it was the brutality of this particular gang rape that shook the world at large out of any customarily lethargic reaction to ‘yet another rape’.