Indian woman who alleged gang-rape dies after burn attack

NEW DELHI (AP) — An alleged rape victim in northern India set on fire on her way to a court hearing in the case she filed died in a hospital in New Delhi, officials said Saturday.

The woman was attacked by a group of men in the state of Uttar Pradesh, including two of the five men she had accused of gang-rape last year who were out of custody on bail.

Five men were arrested in connection with the burn attack.

The 23-year-old woman suffered extensive injuries and was airlifted Thursday from Uttar Pradesh to Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, where she died late Friday of cardiac arrest, according to Dr. Shalab Kumar, head of the hospital’s burn unit.

The woman’s burned corpse was found last week by a passer-by near the city of Hyderabad, India’s tech hub, after she went missing the previous night.

Police took the four suspects to the crime scene to help them locate the victim’s phone and other items, officials said. They said that the men grabbed police firearms and began shooting, and were killed when police returned fire.

The Telangana High Court ordered authorities to preserve the bodies of the suspects and submit a video of the autopsies ahead of a court hearing set for Monday.

Separately, the National Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous body within India’s Parliament, said Friday that it was sending a fact-finding mission to the crime scene amid questions from opposition lawmakers around the circumstances of the suspects’ deaths.