Shame on India - 'India's Daughter' gang rape documentary banned by Indian Government

© AFP: Sajjad Hussain

Protests and outrage over crimes against women in India

India's decision to ban a documentary about the gang rape and murder of a woman in Delhi has been described as "uncivilised" by the film's director. The Indian government obtained a court injunction last week to stop the documentary, , from being broadcast in the country.

The documentary examines the horrific gang rape and murder of a 23 year old medical student in Delhi in December 2012.

"You cannot bury your shame and think you're going to deal with it somehow," the documentary's maker Leslee Udwin said. "India is part of the civilized world. I don't believe this ban was a civilised move."

The film contains confronting and explicit interviews with one of the men convicted of the rape, Mukesh Singh, and two of his lawyers. All three men repeatedly blame the victim and the Indian legal system for the crime. "A decent girl won't roam around at 9 o'clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy," Singh said during an interview conducted in a prison.

He goes on to say: "When being raped, she shouldn't fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape." The young woman attacked and killed by Singh and his accomplices is known as Nirbhaya, or "fearless" in Hindi, as Indian law prohibits the naming of victims of sexual assault.

Her mother, Asha Devi, told the ABC the documentary made a clear statement. "The documentary shows that there are people in our society who have no fear of law, who have no shame - who are such lowlifes that they are able to talk of their crimes," she said.

On the night of her attack, Nirbhaya was on her way home from a movie with a male friend at about 8:30pm. They boarded a private bus, which claimed to be going in their direction. But almost immediately the only other occupants - five men and a teenager - started harassing Nirbhaya.

When her friend tried to intervene he was bashed. The men then dragged Nirbhaya to the back of the bus and gang raped her repeatedly for around 45 minutes, violating her with an iron bar and ripping out some of her intestines.

Nirbhaya and her friend were then both dumped naked on the side of a busy highway and left for dead. Nirbhaya died two weeks later from injuries sustained during the attack. The men and teenager on the bus were arrested and charged. All five men were sentenced to death by hanging. But the sentencing has brought little comfort to Nirbhaya's parents.

"Our lives are totally disturbed and nothing has changed from that day for us - we remain disturbed," her father Badri Nath said.

Film's release could be prejudicial: lawyer

The attack sparked immediate protests in Delhi, with thousands of demonstrators demanding social change and justice."I made this documentary because, in response to this horrific rape, ordinary men and women came out on to the streets of India's cities, day after day for over a month, in a momentous show of determination, of hopefulness and passion, commitment," Ms Udwin said.

But the Indian government has questioned Ms Udwin's methods, saying she did not comply with the conditional permission she was granted to conduct interviews with the rapists in prison.

A court in Delhi justified banning the film, saying the rapist's comments could create "law and order problems". Ms Udwin disputes this, saying she did comply with the conditions of access imposed by the head of Delhi's Tihar Prison. And it's not just the Indian government that believes the documentary should be banned from screening on Indian televisions.

Some activists, including prominent lawyer Nandita Rao, support the ban believing the film could undermine the convicted rapists' ongoing appeals. "Once you show a film like this where one of the co-accused openly maligns, attributes roles and characters to other accused, you actually create a prejudicial environment and they cannot have a fair trial," Ms Rao said. "This is not only against our constitution, but in Britain, they would get an automatic acquittal. Fortunately, or unfortunately, our judges are not such sticklers for civil liberties and the film was banned in India."

Ms Udwin said she sought the advice of several Supreme Court judges before deciding to release the documentary, all of whom told her the cases against the convicted rapists would not be impacted.