India: Woman gang raped on bus in front of daughter after attackers kill her newborn son

A 28-year-old woman was gang-raped in front of her three-year-old daughter after her attackers killed her two-week-old son. The 28-year-old had been visiting her sister when the bus pulled into a station in the town of Shishgarh in northern India's Uttar Pradesh State.

Police spokesman Surendra Singh Panwar said: "She reached Shishgarh on Monday evening." He said she met the two accused at the bus station, from where she was to catch a bus to Bareilly.

Another police spokesman, Yamuna Prasad added: "Her child had been sick for some time and she went to visit her sister to meet a tantrik (a Buddhist healer). She was returning when she met the two accused at the bus station. She was allegedly raped inside the bus at the bus station. Later, she found her child dead."

According to the Times of India, her baby was killed when attackers threw him to the ground. Police say her daughter, who hid in a corner of the bus, was the only witness to the savage assault as the two men raped her mother.

The toddler managed to slip out of the bus without the attackers seeing her and was later found beside her unconscious mother by the side of the road. She was able to give police an account of the harrowing ordeal.

The distraught woman was taken to hospital where she is receiving medical attention. Two men have been arrested and charged with gang rape and culpable homicide following the brutal attack, Mail Online reports.

The incident comes after a 15-year-old girl in New Delhi lost her fight for life, days after she was raped and set on fire by an attacker. Police have arrested a 20-year-old man and charged him with raping and burning the girl on 7 March in a village outside the city.

India has been forced to confront problems of sexual harassment and violence after the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in December 2012.

The watershed gang rape case triggered protests across India and sparked a global outcry with an outraged public taking to the streets in protest and advocating greater protection of women's rights. Women's rights campaigners are demanding that more action is taken as rapes and sexual assaults continue to take place in the capital.