WATCH ABOVE: Filmmakers in India had planned to mark International Women’s Day by airing a documentary about the rape of a student on a New Delhi bus, but the government banned the program, saying it could incite violence against women. Stuart Greer reports.
Jyoti Singh was returning home from seeing a movie with a friend on Dec. 16, 2012, when a group of men gang-raped her on a Delhi bus.
The brutal attack on the 23-year-old paramedical student and her death almost two weeks later sparked mass protests across India and condemnation from around the world.
Leslee Udwin, the director of India’s Daughter said she made the film “out of gratitude to the Indian people who came out onto the streets in unprecedented vast numbers” in the wake of Singh’s death.
But Indian lawmakers are doing whatever they can to prevent the documentary from being seen in India — and even in other countries.
The court prohibited India’s Daughter from being screened on television, on theatre screens and has been successful in getting copies of the 57-minute documentary pulled from YouTube.
Several copies were posted online after it aired Wednesday night on BBC Four.
READ MORE: India to ‘act’ against BBC for airing fatal gang rape documentary
The film is scheduled to air on CBC television on Sunday — International Women’s Day — and in several other countries.
The Editor’s Guild of India has gotten behind Udwin’s documentary and called on the government to overturn the ban on the film, saying the ban is based “on a misunderstanding of the power and the message behind it.”
Please note: 16×9 originally aired this story on Nov. 16, 2013
A big part of the controversy surrounding the film is an interview with 28-year-old Mukesh Singh — one of the six men convicted of gang raping and murdering Jyoti.
Mukesh is on death row. He was driving the bus on which the men raped Jyoti, but he denies taking part in the sexual assault. He’s appealing his conviction.
He and three other men were sentenced to death by hanging, while another adult suspect — Mukesh’s brother, Ram Singh – died while in custody before the trial concluded. A sixth defendant, who was only 17 at the time of the rape, was convicted as a juvenile and sentenced to three years in prison.
READ MORE: Court confirms death sentence against 4 men convicted in fatal New Delhi gang rape
In his interview with Udwin, Mukesh blamed Jyoti for the rape.
“A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” he said. “A decent girl wouldn’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night.”
India’s Home Minister criticized the interview with Mukesh and accused Udwin of trying to capitalize on a horrible crime.
“We will inquire into how permission was obtained to interview a rapist in jail,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh told Indian parliament on Wednesday.
Aside from raising the ire of the Home Minister, a report in the Times of India claims the Home Ministry approved Udwin’s access to Mukesh, inside Tihar jail, without mandatory background checks.
“Though the decision on Udwin’s application may well have been positive after the background check, the fact that this parameter was not fulfilled by either the Home Ministry or the Tihar Jail authorities, is a lapse,” an official told the Times of India.
India’s NDTV, however, published the consent forms authorizing Udwin to enter Tihar Jail and to interview Mukesh about the rape case for the purposes of the documentary.
There’s also an allegation in Indian media that Udwin paid Mukesh 40,000 rupees (approximately CDN $803) for his interview. The money reportedly went to his family.
Jyoti’s parents indicated in an interview with the CBC that they are pursuing legal action over Mukesh’s jailhouse interview.
“He has said this in the court also in the past, but making a documentary while he is in the jail — this sort of permission should not be granted,” Jyoti’s mother Asha Devi told CBC News. “So who made the documentary and why — I can’t say about that. But this should not be allowed while he is lodged in the jail.”
It’s not just Mukesh’s unremorseful remarks that have sparked outrage.
There are also calls from lawyers to revoke the licenses of M.L. Sharma and A.P Singh — the defence lawyers who represented the rapists.
In the film, Sharma and Singh strike a similar misogynistic tone as his client, Mukesh, saying Jyoti and other young women like her shouldn’t be allowed out at night without a family member.
READ MORE: India’s moral police
“There can’t be any justification. A person with this kind of mindset is still a lawyer. It is much more than a crime,” Tulsi said.
In the meantime, Sharma complained to NDTV that Udwin interviewed him for 10 days but “only showed one line.”
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