Passersby film drunken man raping woman in broad daylight but none comes to her rescue
The 43-year-old woman was starving for the past three days when she was assaulted.
In a horrifying incident that took place in a southern Indian city on Sunday (22 October), a woman was raped by a drunken man in broad daylight on a busy street and passersby filmed the incident instead of rescuing the woman.
Police said on Monday that the accused, identified as 23-year-old Ganji Siva, was arrested after an auto-rickshaw driver reported the video of the assault to police. The accused was produced in court and sent to two weeks in judicial remand.
The incident took place in Visakhapatnam city in Andhra Pradesh state on Sunday at around 2.30pm local time (10am BST), K Suresh, police sub-inspector for Visakhapatnam IV town area, told the Hindustan Times.
He said the victim, a 43-year-old woman, was starving for the past three days and had grown too weak to resist the assault or scream for help. She had left her house about two days before the rape following a domestic dispute, the policeman added.
"Apparently, she was very weak as she had not eaten for several hours and was sleeping on the footpath under the shadow of a tree, when Siva, in an inebriated condition assaulted her sexually," Suresh said.
He added that the auto-rickshaw driver shot a short video of the assault and brought it to their notice following which the accused was arrested later that evening.
The video clip, which went viral on Monday, showed how people walking past the drunken man and the victim changed their course ignoring the incident, while some stopped by only to film the shocking assault. "It clearly shows how the people have become insensitive to attacks on women," Suresh said.
The victim was sent to a local hospital for medical examination following the assault.
The accused has previously served time in a juvenile home for theft crimes, police said. Police suspect Siva was under the influence of narcotic drugs at the time of the crime. "We have collected the blood samples of the accused which will be sent to a forensic lab for testing," a police officer told The New Indian Express.
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