In a small one-bedroom home, just 27 miles from Delhi, a mother lies on the floor. She says she has not been able to walk since the day she discovered her daughter had been gang-raped and killed, her head and face smashed with bricks to ensure her body would not be recognized.
Not just that - the attackers also ran over her with their car before abandoning her in an open field where she was found in an open field on Thursday with dogs trying to eat the remains of her corpse. These are the sort of facts that her parents have to bear.
Just days earlier, the mother says, she was tracking the news of the death sentence being confirmed by the Supreme Court for the four men who gang-raped a young student in a moving bus in Delhi, leaving her without her intestines.
She never imagined her own daughter would be put through a similar barbaric ordeal. "When the accused in the Nirbhaya case were punished, our village spoke about the verdict. We thought at least this will deter men, but unfortunately, even today, girls are not safe and men are not scared," she said.
Police have arrested two men for raping and murdering her daughter. Six others are being investigated after the victim's mother accused them of involvement, said superintendent of police Ashwin Shenvi.
The young woman was taken by the men - at least one of whom knew her - by car from near her home in Sonipat to the nearby city of Rohtak, where they drugged and then raped her. "When she said to them she would complain, they hammered her skull in with bricks," he said. "The way that they brutalised her is horrific."
The mother of the victim had registered a complaint a month ago against one of the accused for pressuring her daughter into marrying him, but the disagreement was settled between the two parties.
