Police capture Indian rape suspects

(Vatican Radio) All the five suspects wanted by the police in Mumbai in connection with the rape of a 22-year-old photojournalist in a disused, abandoned mill in the heart of the city, have been arrested. They have been nabbed by the police in a huge manhunt comprising nearly ten teams formed for this specific purpose, four of them from various areas in the city.

Their ages vary from a supposed 16 years to 27 years, though the age of the juvenile is suspected to be the result of a forged birth certificate. The oldest among them was nabbed in Delhi, where he was headed for a slum in which he hoped to go to ground. However, the police picked him up early this morning. He is being brought to Mumbai where, along with the other four, he will be produced before a magistrate and remanded to police custody.

The speed with which the police in Mumbai have been working is practically unprecedented and driven by the nationwide outrage that the crime sparked off. Unprecedented except for the case of the girl who was raped and mutilated in a moving Delhi bus last December, before being thrown out with a male friend who had been beaten up. Her death was announced in a Singapore hospital a fortnight later, where she had been flown by a Central government shaken at the outrage that set parts of the capital on fire with rioting that had to be subdued with water cannons.

In Mumbai too, as well as in Delhi, Kolkata and other major cities, the anger has been deep and intense, spurring the state government and the police into a frenzy of activity.

Meanwhile, the girl is recovering from her ordeal in a city hospital. Her courage has won her thousands of admirers as she declares that she will not be cowed down by the attack, that she wants to see the perpetrators of the ghastly crime given the harshest punishment to deter such attacks on women in future, and that she has every intention of getting back to work as soon as possible.

No less a personage than the Maharashtra home minister, who is responsible for the state of law and order, is taking continuous interest in the development. Yesterday he was reportedly at the police station that is dealing the case, overseeing an interrogation. He has also announced a fast track handling to ensure that justice is done as speedily as possible, to ensure that it does not get bogged down in a judicial system overloaded to nightmare proportions.

For the man on the street, even this cannot be fast enough.

Listen to Carol Andrade's report: