圣
诞节前的一个下午，在印度首都新德里，一位年轻女子与朋友通着电话，急切地想和朋友会面。她对朋友说，醒醒，醒醒，已经很晚了，一点了。
两人约好见面。由此开始了一次单纯的出游活动，但随后却引发了一起令世界不寒而栗的凶杀案。
两人在新德里的时尚购物中心Select Citywalk碰了面。新德里20多岁的年轻人喜欢聚在这里花些零用钱，享受一点印度经济崛起所带来的繁华的滋味。她的朋友在接受采访时说，她（她在家里的小名是“Bitiya”，也就是女儿的意思）很喜欢商店橱窗中陈列的一件大衣。他想以后自己要买下这件大衣送给她。然后，两人去看了电影《少年派的奇幻漂流》(Life of Pi)，坐在之前两人一起看《格列佛游记》(Gulliver's Travels)时坐的位子上。
互动图：印度女子的蒙难之旅
她的死亡引发了印度全国对该国妇女面临的危险的反思。尽管印度不断开放的社会和强劲的经济在不断进步，但无论是在首都的大街上还是在偏远村庄的小巷里，妇女仍面临着危险。她的一生体现了现代印度梦，也就是数百万印度人追求的一代人过上更好的生活。
《华尔街日报》根据对她的家人和朋友的采访重现了她的人生细节。受访者包括她遭受毒打时和她在一起的年轻男子、一位28岁的软件工程师。他接受了治疗并且已经出院，但仍需要医疗护理。根据印度有关强奸案受害者身份披露的法律，《华尔街日报》不能公布这位女子的姓名。
这位年轻女子的父亲是机场工人，每月收入7,000卢比（约合130美元）。她的朋友和家人说，她下决心成为自己这个农业工人阶层的家里第一个有正式职业的人。她的梦想眼看就要实现了。她报名参加了喜马拉雅山脚下一座城市中的一个多年期理疗课程。他的家人和这位朋友说，为了交学费，她晚上在一个外包公司工作，帮助加拿大人解决抵押贷款方面的问题。
Associated Press
周一，一名警官在新德里地方法院为一辆警车开道。据信，五位被指涉案的男子就在这辆警车内。
周一，五位被指强奸并杀害了她的男子在一家新德里法庭首次出庭受审，他们的脸都用灰色毛帽子蒙着。这五人都面临绑架、强奸和谋杀等指控。若被定罪，他们将被判死刑。另有一名未成年嫌犯将在少年法庭受审。
记者无法联系到被告的代理律师。
受害女子的父辈来自印度农村地区北方邦的伯利亚(Ballia)。她父亲说，大约30年前，他们搬到了首都新德里，希望过上更好的生活。他在一家电器厂做了13年的机械工。之后，他自己经营了10年的电压表组装生意，生意一直不好。他还在医院当过保安。
大约三年前，他成为机场的装货工。他把自家一小块土地的一半卖掉，为女儿和两个儿子交学费。他的两个儿子现在分别是17岁和15岁。
这家人住在Mahavir Enclave区的一条宽仅1.8米左右的小巷子里，紧邻一条两边都是鞋店、药房和珠宝店的破败街道。这里是外地人聚居的地方，他们来这里当建筑工人，为德里兴旺的中产阶级修建公寓。
她的弟弟们回忆起跟姐姐大打枕头仗的事。她身高5英尺3英寸（约1.6米），体重约90磅（约41公斤）。但她在学校出类拔萃。她靠给别的孩子当家教赚零花钱。一位自称尼莎(Nisha)的学校好友说，在课堂上，她是最聪明的学生。
Tripti Lahiri/The Wall Street Journal
赤身裸体、鲜血淋漓的两名受害者被扔在这条路边。图为行人在事发地点附近。
位于喜马拉雅山麓台拉登市的学校The Sai Institute of Paramedical and Allied Sciences提供了另一个选择：为期四年半的物理疗法课程，学费相对可以承受。她于2008年11月入学。该校的毕业生预计月薪将近3万卢比，是她父亲收入的四倍以上。
学校教员和她的朋友说，她从中午上课到下午5点。朋友和家人说，为了支付学费，她在一个呼叫中心上班，时间是晚上7点至凌晨4点，负责回答加拿大人有关他们抵押贷款的问题，并领导一个工作团队。记者未能找到她所在的公司。
物理治疗系的教授、系主任盖伊(Bhawna Ghai)说，她第一次来到位于台拉登的学校时，是个内向柔顺的女孩子，穿着样式简单的传统服装。
但随着课程的进展，她逐渐开放起来。她搬出宿舍，跟两个朋友一起住进了一套公寓。她开始为大学舞会编舞并担任主持。
她在大学的朋友们说，她的英语说得很好，热爱阅读，尤其是谢尔顿(Sidney Sheldon)的小说。她还特别喜欢《呼叫中心的一夜》（One Night @ the Call Center），这是印度作家巴哈特(Chetan Bhagat)的畅销小说，讲述六名呼叫中心员工的故事。
钱一直是个问题。朋友们说，既要完成学业，又要在呼叫中心上班，令她精疲力竭。她的室友之一考尔(Sheen Kaur)接受采访时说，她每天晚上只睡两个小时。她总共支付了大约3,300美元的学费。
在这个过程中，她逐渐发展出时尚品味。她弟弟说，如果她在商场看到一件自己买不起的衣服，她会想办法在市集上买到仿品。她有很多鞋子，最喜欢高跟鞋。
Mail Today/Zuma Press
周日，印度民众在新德里悼念轮奸案受害者。
12月16日，袭击发生那天，她的家人聚在她家里。这个姑娘和她妈妈做了午餐──油炸饼醮酸奶、豆子、还有鼓鼓的印度面包puri。几姐弟互相取笑，谈论谁会偷偷在爸爸的食物上咬一口。
她的一个弟弟回忆道，午饭后，他们的父亲去机场上下午2点的班。他姐姐则去商场跟朋友见面，两人之前已经通过电话约好。那名男子和她的家人都说，他们并不是男女朋友关系，而是多年的好友。
她的朋友回忆，在商场里，他注意到她挑染了头发──白色、金色和红色。她问他觉得怎么样。他说他其实不喜欢这样的打扮，但回答说“还行”，以免让她不快。他还评论说她似乎太瘦了。
她回答道，很多人都拼命想要这样的体型呢。
她的朋友说，她喜欢《少年派的奇幻漂流》。影片结束后，他们打了一辆三轮车（一种便宜的三轮出租车）到德里南部主要公路上的Munirka，那里可以方便地坐巴士回她家。
据警方说，当天晚上，在大约五英里（合八公里）以外一个约有300户人的Ravi Dass贫民窟，两兄弟拉姆•辛格(Ram Singh)和穆克什•辛格(Mukesh Singh)正在举办一个小型派对，用鸡肉和酒款待客人。拉姆是一辆私人巴士的司机。
警方说，当晚，维奈•夏尔马(Vinay Sharma)参加了他们的派对。夏尔马这个年轻人是当地一个健身房的助手，每月收入40美元。据他的母亲占巴•德维(Champa Devi)说，在那之前他一直在家中看电视，然后一个朋友、当地的一个水果商贩帕万•古普塔(Pawan Gupta)过来找他。据警方说，最后两人去了辛格兄弟的派对。辛格兄弟住在附近一条狭窄的巷子中。
据警方说，这几个人加上另外一名男子和一名未成年人决定坐拉姆驾驶的巴士“兜兜风”。
警方说，晚上九点一刻左右，巴士到达上述年轻女子和她朋友等车的车站。警方说，车上的人提出载他们去女子家附近的Dwarka。
印度强奸案地图
据女子的朋友说，嫌犯开始用污言秽语调戏她，之后就吵了起来。女子的朋友说，一些人用一根铁棍把他打晕了。
警方说，在巴士行驶途中，年轻女子在车后被强暴。在此期间，巴士曾驶过大使馆工作人员和外国人居住的高档社区Vasant Vihar。警方说，大约40分钟后，巴士在一条满是打着霓虹灯招牌的廉价旅馆街附近停下来。旅馆的名字包括Star（星星）、Venus（金星）和Highway Crown（公路皇冠），这些旅馆是为机场附近的旅客提供服务的。
警方和那名年轻男子说，巴士上的那些人在那里把他们两人赤身裸体地扔下车，就扔在路边的一片满是灰尘的干草丛里。女子躺在那里昏迷不醒，她的朋友头上的伤口在流血，但那会儿已经能站起来了，他朝路过的车子挥手，高声呼救。他说，足足有20多分钟，没有一个人停下来。
在那一带上班的几个人说，这条公路的建筑商和目前的经营商DSC Ltd.的两名员工最先关注两名受害者，时间在晚上10点左右。该公司拒绝置评。一位了解情况的人士说，DSC的一名员工给警方打了电话。
过了一会儿，附近一家旅馆的经理骑着摩托车回家。此人28岁，身材结实。他也骑着车径直经过了现场，没有停车──但随后又折返回来，因为那名男子满脸鲜血的样子打动了他。
他接受采访时说，在他们等待警察到场时，他从自己工作的旅馆拿了一张床单让他们遮身，还给了他们一瓶水。DSC的一名员工给了那名女子一件毛衣，并给她的朋友一件衬衫。两人被扔下车大约45分钟后，警方到达了现场。
这名年轻女子被警方送往大约8英里（约13公里）外的Safdarjung医院，差不多在同一时间，她的家人开始担心起来。她弟弟说，Bitiya通常都会在晚上8点30分以前回家。他说：我们很担心，但没有别的选择，只能等着。他拨打了两人的手机，但没打通。
晚上11点15分左右，警方打来电话说这名女子出事了。她父亲跟一个邻居骑着摩托车赶到医院。她弟弟说：我们觉得心往下沉，担心出现最坏的情况。
KRISHNA POKHAREL和SAURABH CHATURVEDI发自印度戈勒克布尔 / VIBHUTI AGARWAL发自台拉登 / TRIPTI LAHIRI发自新德里It was early afternoon just before Christmas in India's capital, and a young woman spoke to her friend on the phone, eager to get together.
'Wake up, wake up,' she told him. 'It's already very late─1 o'clock.'
The two agreed to meet. And so began an innocent outing that set in motion a killing that would horrify the world.
The two met at Select Citywalk, a trendy mall where New Delhi's 20-somethings gather to spend pocket change and enjoy a small taste of the glamour promised by India's economic rise. The young woman─her family's nickname for her was 'Bitiya,' which means daughter─admired a long coat in a shop window, her friend said in an interview. He thought he would like to buy it for her later. Then, they took in a movie, 'Life of Pi,' sitting in the same seats where, on an earlier visit, they had watched 'Gulliver's Travels' together.
A few hours later, the pair were dumped, naked and bleeding, from a private bus along a highway. Both had been viciously attacked with an iron rod, according to police, and the young woman so violently raped that she died a few weeks later, on Dec. 29.
Her death has spawned a moment of national introspection over the threats women face here, whether on the streets of the capital city or in the lanes of a distant village, despite the advances of India's liberalizing society and invigorated economy. Her life embodied the modern Indian dream, the one-generation upward transformation that millions here are pursuing.
The Wall Street Journal reconstructed the details of her life from interviews with family and friends, including the young man, a 28-year-old software engineer, who was with her when she was beaten. He was treated and released but still requires medical attention. The Journal is refraining from publishing the woman's name in keeping with Indian laws governing the identification of rape victims.
The young woman, the child of an airport laborer who earns 7,000 rupees a month (about $130), was determined, her friends and family said, to become the first from her family, which hails from a caste of agricultural workers, to have a professional career. She was on the cusp of achieving it. She had enrolled in a yearslong physiotherapy course in a city in the foothills of the Himalayas. To afford it, she worked nights at an outsourcing firm, helping Canadians with their mortgage issues, family members and her friend said.
As she amassed some money of her own, she enjoyed figuring out how to spend it. Lately, she had her eye on a Samsung smartphone. One day she hoped to buy an Audi. 'I want to build a big house, buy a car, go abroad and will work there,' her friend, the software engineer, recalled her saying.
On Monday, five men who allegedly raped and killed her appeared before a New Delhi court for the first time, their faces covered in gray woolen caps. All five face charges of kidnapping, rape and murder, among other crimes. They face the death sentence if found guilty. A sixth alleged assailant, a juvenile, faces proceedings before a juvenile court.
A lawyer for the accused couldn't be reached.
The family originally hails from Ballia in rural Uttar Pradesh state. They moved to the capital city, Delhi, about 30 years ago to seek 'a better life,' her father said. He worked for 13 years as a mechanic at an appliance factory. Then he struggled for a decade in his own business, assembling voltage meters. He worked as a hospital security guard.
About three years ago, he became a loader at the airport. He sold half of a small parcel of land to pay for the education of his daughter and her two younger brothers, who are now 17 and 15 years old.
The family lives in Mahavir Enclave on a 6-foot-wide lane off a decrepit street lined with shoe shops, dispensaries and jewelry stores. It is a neighborhood of migrants who work as construction laborers, building apartment houses for Delhi's blossoming middle class.
Her brothers recalled pillow-fights with their elder sister, who was only 5-foot-3 and weighed about 90 pounds. But she stood out as a high achiever in school. She earned pocket money tutoring other children. 'She was the brightest student in the classroom,' said a school friend who identified herself only as Nisha.
At first, Bitiya had wanted to be a doctor. But her father couldn't afford her tuition or find a suitable guarantor for a loan that a bank would require.
The Sai Institute of Paramedical and Allied Sciences, in the city of Dehra Dun in the Himalayan foothills, offered an alternative: a 4½-year physiotherapy course that was more affordable. She enrolled in November 2008. A graduate from the school is expected to earn a monthly salary of nearly 30,000 rupees, more than four times what her father earns.
She attended classes from noon to 5 p.m., staff and her friends said. To pay the fees, she worked at a call center on the 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift, handling questions from Canadians about their mortgages and supervising a team of employees, friends and family said. The company couldn't be located.
When she first arrived at school in Dehra Dun, she was an 'introverted and submissive' young woman who wore simple, traditional dresses, said Bhawna Ghai, a professor and head of the physiotherapy department.
But as the course progressed, she opened up. She left the dorm and moved into an apartment with two friends. She began choreographing and emceeing college dance recitals.
A good English speaker, she became an avid reader, particularly Sidney Sheldon novels, her college friends said. She was a fan, too, of 'One Night @ the Call Center,' a best-selling novel by Indian author Chetan Bhagat about six call-center workers.
Money remained an issue. Combining her studies and the call-center job was exhausting, friends said. 'She slept for only two hours' a night, said Sheen Kaur, one of her roommates, in an interview. In all, she paid about $3,300 in tuition fees.
Along the way, she developed an eye for fashion. If she spotted an outfit she couldn't afford at the mall, her brother said, she would find ways to replicate it in the bazaars. She amassed a shoe collection, preferably high heels.
This past October, she returned to Delhi to look for a volunteer internship, a requirement to complete her physiotherapy studies.
On Dec. 16, the day of the attack, her family gathered at their home. The young woman and her mother cooked lunch─fritters in yogurt, beans, and puffy bread called puri. The siblings teased each other about who would steal a bite of their father's food.
After lunch, their father went to work on the 2 p.m. shift at the airport, one of her brothers recalled. And his sister went to see her friend at the mall, the meeting the two had earlier arranged on the phone. The two weren't dating, both he and the family said, but had been friends for years.
At the mall, her friend recalled noticing that she had put streaks in her hair─white, gold and red. She asked him what he thought. He says he wasn't really a fan of the look, but answered 'It's OK,' so as not to hurt her feelings. He also remarked that she seemed too thin.
'A lot of people struggle to get this physique,' she responded.
After 'Life of Pi' ended─she loved the movie, her friend said─they took a motorized rickshaw, an inexpensive, three-wheeled taxi, to Munirka on Delhi's main southern highway, a convenient point to board a bus toward her home.
The same evening, about five miles away in a slum of about 300 dwellings known as Ravi Dass camp, two brothers, Ram and Mukesh Singh, were throwing a small party with chicken and alcohol, according to police. Ram was the driver of a private bus.
They were joined that evening by Vinay Sharma, a young man who earned $40 a month as a helper at a local gym, police said. Earlier he had been watching television at home, according to his mother, Champa Devi, when a friend and local fruit-seller, Pawan Gupta, stopped by. Eventually, according to police, the two men joined the Singh brothers, who lived down a narrow lane nearby.
The group, which included one other man and a juvenile, decided to take what police have described as a 'joy ride' on the bus that Ram Singh drove.
Around 9:15 p.m., police said, the bus pulled into the stop where the young woman and her friend were looking for a ride. The men aboard the bus offered them a lift to Dwarka, near the young woman's home, according to police.
Four of the alleged assailants acted like regular passengers, according to the young man who boarded. One of them collected 20 cents for each ticket and the other drove.
The accused began taunting the woman with lewd comments, according to her friend, which led to a brawl. The young woman's friend said that some of the men knocked him unconscious with an iron bar.
At the back of the bus, police said, the young woman was raped as the vehicle was driven around, passing Vasant Vihar, an upscale neighborhood which is home to embassies and expatriates. After about 40 minutes, according to police, the bus stopped near a strip of budget neon-lit hotels with names like Star, Venus and Highway Crown, that cater to travelers near the airport.
There, the men on the bus dumped the two friends, naked, by the side of the road in a dusty strip of dried grass, according to police and the young man. As the woman lay barely conscious, her friend, who was bleeding from a cut to the head but could now stand, waved his arms and shouted for help at passing cars. For more than 20 minutes, he said, no one stopped.
Several people who work in the area said that two employees of DSC Ltd., the company that built the highway and now runs it, were the first to attend to the two victims, around 10 p.m. The company declined to comment. One of the DSC employees put in a call to the police, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Moments later, a manager from one of the nearby hotels, a burly 28-year-old, got on his motorbike to head home. He passed the scene without stopping─but then turned back, struck by the image of blood streaming down the man's face.
He offered to get a sheet and a bottle of water from his hotel to cover them as they waited for the police, he said in an interview. One of the DSC employees gave a sweater to the young woman and a shirt to her friend. About 45 minutes after the two were dumped, the police arrived.
Around the same time as the young woman was being taken by police to Safdarjung Hospital, about eight miles away, her family was starting to grow concerned. Usually, her brother said, Bitiya returned home by 8:30 p.m. 'We were really worried, but didn't have any other option than waiting,' he said. He dialed the pair's mobile phones without success.
Around 11:15 p.m., the police phoned and said the young woman had been in an accident. Her father rushed to the hospital with a neighbor on a motorbike. 'It was a sinking feeling,' her brother said. 'We feared for the worst.'
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