Remembering Nirbhaya with stories of courage in exhibition named 'Unearthed'

Nirbhaya's parents paid tribute to their daughter who was brutally gangraped on Dec 16th 2012. Through a photo exhibition, Unearthed: Stories of Courage in the Face of Sexual Violence, they talked about their struggle for justice.

23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh was brutally gang-raped by six men in a moving bus in Delhi. This incident sparked outrage not just in India but across the world putting the spotlight on safety of women in India.

Safety of women continues to be compromised said Nirbhaya's father Badri Singh. “Rajneeti ke chakkar mein choti choti ladkiyan pisti chali ja rahi hain aur sarkar kuch nahi kar rahi hai. Jab Nirbhaya ka case hua tab sarkar ne bohot ashwasan diya phir bhi kuch nahi ho raha hai. (So many young girls are suffering because of the politics and the government is not doing anything. The government promised so many changes and amendments in law, but nothing is happening.)"

Parents said that their daughter was no longer alive, but they remain worried about the other girls who walk the streets of the capital. “If the juvenile is freed then he can make anyone his next target and we don’t want that to happen,” asserted Singh.

Singh insists the juvenile should get death sentence like others as he "was an equal perpetrator." To this, Ranjana Kumari, Director of Centre for Social Research added, “We completely support child’s rights, but in Jyoti’s case, the juvenile was the most brutal of all the rapists. His acts led to her death, as said by the victim to the mother...We want to know his mental health and what kind of reform has he gone through.”

The kind of outrage that we saw during Nirbhaya (another name given to the victim) gang-rape was bone chilling. People came out of their houses to protest. There were night vigils and candle light marches in support of the family and against rape. People were enraged and saddened in India and the rest of the world and numbed at the brutality of this.