London: A traumatised father of the 23-year-old Delhi gang-rape victim wants the world to know his daughter's real name to give courage to other victims while demanding death for all the six accused "beasts".
Following the girl's brutal assault in a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, the Indian media has refrained from naming her.
She died on December 29 at a Singapore hospital where she was shifted to from Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital in an extremely critical condition.
"We want the world to know her real name. My daughter didn't do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter," the victim's 53-year-old father told 'The Sunday People', the Daily Mirror's Sunday edition, in his ancestral village in Ballia in Uttar Pradesh.
His comments sparked off a debate on the social media. Naming her would give a face to the movement seeking strict laws for crimes against women, a Facebook post said.
Another said, the victim already has several pseudonyms given by the media and the people will fight back.
The newspaper posted the father's picture with his name. It then revealed the victim's name, saying it had the permission of the father.
The father showed the family album with photographs of his daughter smiling. While in some photographs she was wearing traditional saree, in others she was mostly in western clothes.
The newspaper said in deference to the father's wish not to make public her picture, it was not doing so.
Indian law forbids revealing of the name of a rape victim unless her family agrees to it.
Since her death, the girl's family has retreated to their village.
"At first I wanted to see the men responsible face to face but I don't want to any more. I just want to hear that the courts have punished them and they will be hanged," the newspaper quoted the father as saying.
"Death for all six of them. These men are beasts. They should be made an example of and that society will not allow such things to happen," the girl's father said.
The girl's father told the newspaper that the friend of the victim was not her boyfriend, just a very brave friend who tried to save her.
"There was no question of her marrying because we belong to different castes. She never expressed a desire to marry. She was concentrating on her studies and wanted a job first," he said.
The father also revealed that the girl often mentioned how much her friend tried to save her.
"She kept telling her mother he tried his best to help but they kept beating him with a rod," the father said.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, January 06, 2013, 09:54