Banned Indian rape documentary India’s Daughter debuts in US

Actress Meryl Streep arrives for the premiere of the film India’s Daughter at Baruch College. AP

A BBC rape documentary banned from being broadcast in India received its premiere in the United States at a star-studded event that included the actresses Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto.

The screening of India's Daughter at Baruch College in New York City began on Monday with a vigil, as Oscar-winner Streep lit a dozen candles in honour of the Indian woman who died after being gang-raped on a bus in 2012. Organisers said about 650 people attended the event.

“Tonight we light these candles to honour the value and the work of Jyoti Singh’s short, promising life,” said Streep. “She was India’s daughter. Tonight she’s our daughter, too.”

Singh was attacked when she and a male companion boarded a private bus in Delhi. The documentary details a brutal account of how six men beat her friend and then gang-raped her in the bus before tossing them onto the street. They were found on the side of the road and Singh died of her injuries two weeks later. Four men were convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder.

The victim’s parents said they want the world to know about their daughter’s plight.

"This is not a shame-India documentary," said Pinto, the Indian actress known for her role in Slumdog Millionaire.

The film’s US premiere follows a week of controversy in India.

The uproar centred around comments made by one of the convicted rapists interviewed for the film. He blamed Singh for taking a bus late in the evening.

“A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night ... Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes,” he says in the film.

The documentary, by the British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, herself a rape victim, was to be broadcast on the Indian television station NDTV on Sunday, International Women’s Day, but a court order halted it. It was done in the interest of maintaining public order, according to Indian authorities. NDTV showed a blank screen when it was time for the film to be broadcast.

India's Daughter was first screened in Britain on a BBC channel last week. The film can be seen on YouTube.

“This film in no way is propagating violence in order to solve the problem. In fact, what we’re saying is, let’s do this in the most civilised possible way ever,” Pinto said before the film’s screening.

“This is not just an India problem; this is a problem that aff­licts almost every country in the world,” she said. “There’s not a single country in 2015 that is free of sexual violence against women.”

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