By IANS,
Kolkata: Kolkata’s fashionable Park Street was all decked up for the New Year party, but many thought the occasion apt to remember the Delhi gangrape victim with flowers and candles.
Hundreds of people were seen gathering on the British era road since the evening, but simultaneously there was a substantial number who carried wreaths and lit candles as a mark of tribute to the 23-year-old physiotherapist trainee who was brutally raped and grievously injured by a group of miscreants Dec 16. She died in a Singapore hospital Saturday.
“Yes, we will celebrate New Year. But we also mourn for her, and what she had to go through,” said a young woman.
“We have brought flowers and candles in her memory. We only want the administration to know how bad we feel. How horror-stricken we are,” said a middle-aged women, who identified herself as a lawyer.
A group of women carried posters crying “We want severe punishment for rape offenders”.
NGO India’s Smile brought out a candle light vigil in which college students and a large number of women participated.
There was virtually a scramble among people to put their signatures in a 30-feet banner that called for amending India’s age-old laws on rape and honour killings to give the legislations more teeth.
“We will send the banner with signatures to our President Pranab Mukherjee,” said Rajeev Sarkar, an official of the NGO.