A regional Hindu fundamentalist party in India, Shiv Sena, has reportedly distributed small knives among its women supporters in the western state of Maharashtra for "self protection". This comes in the wake of the horrific gang-rape of a 23- year-old medical student on a moving bus in Mumbai last month.
"Our (late) party leader Bal Thackeray had said that women should carry a 'rampuri' (a small knife) in their purse rather than a lipstick. So we are handing out these knives to help them defend themselves. The way you (women) cut vegetables, cut the hand of the person who touches you the same way," Ajay Chaudhury, an office-bearer of Shiv Sena, told the media in Mumbai.
The Delhi University student was gang-raped by six men on a moving bus on December 16 last year, which she and her boyfriend had boarded after watching a movie at a multiplex in the south of the Indian capital. The duo were also beaten up mercilessly by the accused who are currently in judicial custody.
Earlier this month, the victim died at a Singapore hospital where she was shifted after her condition deteriorated at a government hospital in the Indian capital.
Five of the six accused have been slapped with rape and murder charges which carry a maximum punishment of death penalty, while the sixth accused, said to be a minor is likely to get a maximum of three years in jail due to separate lenient laws for juveniles.