A teenager from a north Indian village who was reported to have been dragged from a field and raped by a group of men died of her injuries at a hospital in New Delhi on Tuesday, triggering nationwide outrage again after years of what experts describe as a gang rape epidemic in India.
The 19-year-old woman, whom Indian law prohibits naming, had been transferred to the hospital just a day before, two weeks after she was gang-raped and mutilated by higher-caste men near their village in the Hathras District in Uttar Pradesh state, her family said.
The police chief in Hathras, Vikrant Vir, said that four men had been arrested on charges of gang rape and murder. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that "strictest action” should be taken against the attackers, according to a Twitter post by Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh’s top elected official and a leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.