Public anger against crimes against women exploded after a fatal... (Associated Press) 
 
 A young Indian woman holds a candle as she joins others in commemorating last year’s gang rape and murder of a young woman in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Public anger against crimes against women exploded after a fatal... (Associated Press) 
 
 The victim, a 23-year-old student, was heading home with a male friend after watching the movie "Life of Pi" when six men lured them onto a private bus. "I think after the Delhi rape case there was a tendency ... to talk of it as a specifically Indian problem … media seem to present it as a uniquely Indian problem, or a problem of Indian culture, and then question why are Indian men raping Indian women, and obviously that is a very dangerous discourse, because we all know that violence against women is a global phenomenon … What I would say [is] it isn’t exceptional to the Indian context but in every context." The outrage spurred the government to adopt more stringent laws that doubled prison terms for rape and criminalized voyeurism, stalking, acid attacks and the trafficking of women. Twelve months on, it has also introduced fast-track courts for rape cases, and vigils have been held across the capital. Four of those convicted were later sentenced to death by hanging. There has been a surge in the number of rapes being reported: Between January and October this year, 1,330 rapes were reported in Delhi and its suburbs, compared with 706 for all of 2012, according to government figures.
– India today convicted three Nepalese men in the gang rape of an American tourist in a small Himalayan town, reports the Wall Street Journal, with each of the men drawing a 20-year prison term. The woman, then 30, now 31, was assaulted after accepting a ride back to her guesthouse from a truck driver, who, along with two other men, allegedly assaulted her and left her by the side of the road. The verdict comes down one day after the anniversary of the fatal gang rape aboard a New Delhi bus that catapulted rape into a major issue in India—and imposed a 20-year minimum sentence for it. There were protest rallies and candlelight vigils in memory of the event around the country yesterday, the AP reports. One Bollywood actress led a troupe of street performers and performed plays all along the fateful bus route. "I don't think things have changed," one protester told al-Jazeera. "It's just that women are less fearful of saying what's happening."