To protect her privacy the victim’s name was not released publicly. But while she remains nameless, she did not remain faceless. To see her face, women had only to look in the mirror. The full measure of their vulnerability was finally understood.

◼ The Unspeakable Truth About Rape in India - Sonia Faleiro/NYT

On Dec. 16, as the world now knows, a 23-year-old woman and a male friend were returning home after watching the movie “Life of Pi” at a mall in southwest Delhi. After they boarded what seemed to be a passenger bus, the six men inside gang-raped and tortured the woman so brutally that her intestines were destroyed. The bus service had been a ruse. The attackers also severely beat up the woman’s friend and threw them from the vehicle, leaving her to die.

The young woman didn’t oblige. She had started that evening watching a film about a survivor, and must have been determined to survive herself. Then she produced another miracle. In Delhi, a city habituated to the debasement of women, tens of thousands of people took to the streets and faced down police officers, tear gas and water cannons to express their outrage. It was the most vocal protest against sexual assault and rape in India to date, and it set off nationwide demonstrations....

The volume of protests in public and in the media has made clear that the attack was a turning point. The unspeakable truth is that the young woman attacked on Dec. 16 was more fortunate than many rape victims. She was among the very few to receive anything close to justice. She was hospitalized, her statement was recorded and within days all six of the suspected rapists were caught and, now, charged with murder. Such efficiency is unheard-of in India.

In retrospect it wasn’t the brutality of the attack on the young woman that made her tragedy unusual; it was that an attack had, at last, elicited a response.

◼ Delhi Rape Accused Face Murder Charge as India Seeks Justice - Bibhudatta Pradhan & Pratap Patnaik/Bloomberg

“It will be our endeavor to ensure the harshest punishment in the book for the culprits,” Dharmendra Kumar, special commissioner of police, said Dec. 29, hours after the death of the woman, who hasn’t been named. Kumar said police added the section of India’s penal code relating to murder to the case.

In a sign of the anger the rape has triggered, about 200 lawyers staged a demonstration today outside the court where charges will be brought, calling for the death sentence for those accused of the assault.

On the eve of today’s hearing, new details emerged of the brutal assault that has triggered weeks of soul-searching in New Delhi and beyond.

The victims boarded the bus without knowing it was plying illegally, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, citing interviews with police officers it did not name. The suspects first attacked the 28-year-old man and when the woman intervened to protect him, she was beaten and sexually assaulted, it said.

After throwing both from the bus, the driver attempted to run them down, the agency reported. The assailants told police they had raped the woman “to teach her a lesson” after she fought back in a confrontation, the Indian Express newspaper reported Dec. 19.

◼ New Delhi Gang Rape: Youngest Attacker 'Ripped out Victim's Intestines with Bare Hands'... - IB Times

Because of his age, he is the only one of the six who cannot be sentenced to death if found guilty. He will be tried in a juvenile court.

Five adults have been charged with rape and murder and police say they plan to push for the death penalty.

However, the maximum sentence the juvenile can receive under existing law is three years.