Delhi rape victim's family: She was brave, full of life 
 
 Many in India are calling for death penalty for the attackers 
 
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 The world knows her as the "Delhi gang-rape victim". 
 
 But her grief-stricken family and relatives, trying to come to terms with their loss, remember her as a brave girl who dreamed of relieving people's pain. 
 
 She wanted to build a hospital in her ancestral village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. 
 
 She seldom visited the village, in one of the most undeveloped regions in the country, but she had said she wanted to do something to help the people there. 
 
 The family moved to Delhi in 1983 in search of a better life but on Monday, her family arrived to scatter her ashes in the river Ganges. I joined her parents and brothers in the village. 
 
 Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The last time I spoke to her was in the hospital on Christmas. She gestured with her fingers that she was going to heaven” End Quote Victim's brother 
 
 Her father sat cross-legged on a stack of hay spread out thinly across the floor in a crudely-built hall outside the house. 
 
 "She was brave, had no fear, and was full of life," he said. 
 
 Born and raised in a lower middle class family, the 23-year old saw education as the passport to improving her family's economic plight. 
 
 She wanted to be a doctor since "she began playing with dolls", says the father. 
 
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 "I told her repeatedly that I could not fund her education, but she did not budge." 
 
 But, she was determined and eventually she won. The family sold off a chunk of their village land to fund her education. 
 
 "I wanted my children to get the best of education," he says, proudly. 
 
 'Going to heaven' 
 
 Her brother, who was the last member from the family to speak to her before she was attacked, remembers her as an affectionate and hardworking elder sister who led by example while prodding her two brothers to study hard. 
 
 "She studied day and night. We would not even know when she slept and woke up." 
 
 Her ancestral village was in one of the most undeveloped regions of the country 
 
 He breaks down every time he remembers the fights he had with her, mostly over the television remote control - she preferred to watch soaps and Bigg Boss was one of her favourite programmes. 
 
 "She scolded me, but she loved me as well." 
 
 He recalls the events of the day when his sister was brutally attacked by six men in a bus. 
 
 "My sister normally returned home by 8pm every day. If she anticipated a delay, she would call up without fail and tell us how and when she would be back. 
 
 "On that day she rang up around 7pm and I took her call. She said that she would be slightly delayed but when I began calling her after 8pm, I couldn't get through to her." 
 
 A few hours' later, the family received a call from the Safdarjung hospital where she was taken by the police for treatment informing them that she had "met with an accident". 
 
 "She was not scared of anyone. We could never imagine that such a fate would befall her... She must never have imagined it." 
 
 Grim mood 
 
 He says the last time he spoke to her was in the hospital on Christmas. 
 
 The attack has triggered an outpouring of anger across India 
 
 "She gestured with her fingers that she was going to heaven." 
 
 Her father remembers how she asked for food once she regained consciousness in hospital. "She specifically asked for toffee. The doctor asked, 'will you mind a lollipop,' and she replied, 'yes!'" 
 
 He dismisses reports that she was about to get married soon: "She said she would not marry till her brothers finished their education." 
 
 The mood in her ancestral village is grim and the villagers are calling for the death penalty for the accused. 
 
 But her father is asking his two sons to look ahead. 
 
 "He told us to focus us on our forthcoming examination. But I can't - I have lost my power to feel and think," her brother said. ||||| NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five Indian men were formally charged in court on Thursday with the gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in a case that has generated widespread anger about the government's inability to prevent violence against women. 
 
 The December 16 attack on the 23-year-old student and a male companion provoked furious protests close to the seat of government in New Delhi and has fuelled a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual crime in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes. 
 
 The woman died of her injuries in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, on Saturday. 
 
 The five are accused of assaulting the woman on a bus in New Delhi, leaving her with such severe injuries that she died two weeks later. They were not present in court. 
 
 A sixth accused is under 18 and is due to be tried separately in a juvenile court. 
 
 A public prosecutor read out charges including murder, gang rape and criminal conspiracy. The court will examine the charges on Saturday, duty magistrate Surya Malik Grover said. 
 
 Murder carries the death penalty in India. 
 
 The father of the woman said earlier he backed the chorus of calls for those responsible to be executed. 
 
 "The whole country is demanding that these monsters be hanged. I am with them," the father told reporters in his home village of Mandwara Kalan in Uttar Pradesh state. The woman was born in the village but the family later moved to New Delhi. 
 
 She has not been identified and nor have members of her family, in accordance with Indian law. 
 
 In a sign of the depth of feeling surrounding the case, the bar association at the court said none of its members was willing to represent the accused. The court is expected to assign a defense lawyer for the men. 
 
 Advocates dressed in black robes protesting outside the court called for fast justice. In the northern state of Kashmir, school girls marched with black ribbons over their mouths and demanded harsh punishment for the accused. 
 
 The case is due to be processed by a new, fast-track chamber set up in response to the crime. 
 
 While the fast-track procedure has broad support, many lawyers worry new that legislation written in haste could be unconstitutional and oppose introducing the death penalty for rape. 
 
 "A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said on Wednesday. 
 
 ANGER 
 
 Police have said the accused have admitted to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson". She fought back and bit three of them, a police source told Reuters, and the bite marks are part of the evidence against them. 
 
 After throwing her from the private bus, the driver tried to run the victim over but she was pulled away by her companion, a senior police official told Reuters. 
 
 Police have prepared a dossier of evidence and charges against the accused, which is believed to run to 1,000 pages, including testimony from the woman's friend who survived the hour-long attack and a man who said he was robbed by the same gang prior to the rape. 
 
 Days of protests in New Delhi and other cities followed the attack. Many of the protesters have been students, infuriated by what they see as the failure of the government to protect women. 
 
 In the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday, village women beat a politician and handed him to police for what they said was the attempted rape of a woman, police said. Anti-rape protests have also broken out in neighboring Nepal. 
 
 The government has set up two panels headed by retired judges to recommend measures to ensure women's safety. One of the panels, due to make recommendations this month, has received some 17,000 suggestions from the public, media reported. 
 
 India's chief justice inaugurated the first fast-track court for sexual offences on Wednesday - a long standing demand of activists to clear a court backlog. 
 
 A review of India's penal code, which dates back to 1860, was presented to parliament last month, before the attack, and widens the definition of rape, another demand of activists. 
 
 That bill is now likely to be revised further, with chemical castration and the death penalty in rape cases among proposals under consideration. 
 
 "We want the laws to be amended in such a stringent way that before a person even thinks of touching a girl, he should feel chills down his spine," said lawyer Suman Lata Katiyal, protesting at the south Delhi courthouse. 
 
 Hanging is only allowed in the "rarest of rare" cases according to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. It was used for the first time in eight years in November when the lone surviving gunman from a 2008 militant attack on Mumbai, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab from Pakistan, was executed. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Diksha Madhok, Annie Banerji and Satarupa Bhatgtacharjya in NEW DELHI; and Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel)
– As expected, murder charges were filed today against five men accused of brutally gang-raping a woman on a New Delhi bus. The sixth suspect, a teenager, will see his case handled separately. The men were also charged with rape and other crimes, a list expected to include kidnapping, robbery, and assault, the New York Times reports. The combination could result in the death penalty, which is rare in India. Also rare in India: The trial will be fast-tracked. (Click for more details that have leaked from the filing.) The father of the victim, who was a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, wants the men responsible—including the teen—to be hanged, Reuters reports. He also wants new sex crimes legislation named after his daughter, who has not been identified in accordance with Indian law. The BBC has a profile of her: She dreamed of building a hospital in her ancestral village to help people in the severely undeveloped region; she had wanted to become a doctor since childhood and saw education as the way to improve her family's situation; she studied at all hours. "She was brave, had no fear, and was full of life," says her father.