India's Daughter

Jyoti Singh was a young physiotherapy student from a poor family in New Delhi, and a symbol of a 21st century India in which economic growth is expanding opportunity for women and men alike. With dreams of a career in medicine, Jyoti asked her parents, Badri and Asha Singh, to use her wedding dowry to pay for her education. Despite protest from the extended family, Jyoti’s parents willingly obliged, and sold the family’s ancestral land to put her through school. On December 16, 2012, she went to see Life of Pi with a male friend. When they boarded a private bus to return home in the early evening, the young man was beaten until helpless, and Jyoti was dragged to the back of the bus and repeatedly gang raped. Her assailants brutalized her as they circled the city, and injured her internal organs, ultimately eviscerating her with an iron rod. She miraculously survived for 13 days before the surgeons could do no more.