'I Pledge to Walk Alone': Activists Demand Safer Cities for Women in India

The trial of five men accused in December’s horrific gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a New Delhi bus began Monday. The woman died of massive internal injuries two weeks after she was attacked when coming home from a movie with a male friend, and the case is being heard in a “fast-track” court, one of six instituted by the government in the Indian capital to deal with crimes against women.

The swift action is an attempt to answer critics who say that official response to rape in India has historically been slow, tepid, and ineffective. Some 95,000 rape cases are currently pending in Indian courts, according to the BBC, and in the capital, where sexual assaults are at a record high, only 1 of the 635 rape cases filed last year has resulted in a conviction to date.