Mother of woman who was gang-raped and mutilated in India demands death for culprits

An Indian rape victim's mother has demanded the death penalty for the culprits who murdered her daughter and mutilated the body after the assault.

The vicious sexual assault in the northern Indian state of Haryana is a grim reminder of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape.

The mother told the BBC that her daughter was "a brave girl because she fought her rapists till the end".

"I want the death penalty for the culprits as a deterrent for others," she said, adding that the cruelty of the attack shows that "the men don't deserve any mercy".

"It's difficult to forget the circumstances in which I had to identify her body. She was all naked and her face and upper part of the body was not identifiable," the woman's mother said.

Her comments came after her 23-year-old daughter's shocking post-mortem report, which said sharp objects were inserted into her vagina and her skull was smashed with bricks.

It also revealed that the attackers had run a car over her body to hide her identity. The body was left in a field for stray dogs to feed on.

The victim was found on 11 May by local residents, two days after she went missing. The body was so badly mutilated that it could only be identified by her family by the clothes she wore at the time of her disappearance.

"We arrested two suspects the following day and they have confessed to the crime," superintendent of police Ashwin Shenvi said, adding that the medical examination suggests she was drugged before the violent sexual attack.

She allegedly knew at least one of the suspects. The woman's father has said that the suspects "had been stalking her for a while".

"She was not friends with these men. A few months ago, she and her mother even complained to the police about these men and apparently they apologised so the matter probably ended there," he added.

Rape is the fourth most common crime in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau report of 2013. Though laws against sexual violence were tightened after the 2012 brutal gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus, the numbers have not gone down.