Outrage at bus gang rape of Indian medical student

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  Prayers at a candle-lit vigil in Mumbai as the violent attack led to protests across the country Rafiq Maqbool/AP

Francis Elliott Delhi

Last updated at 10:45AM, December 21 2012

The gang rape of a medical student on a bus in Delhi is forcing India to confront the factors behind an increase in attacks on women, many of them involving extreme sexual violence.

The 23-year-old, whose parents had sold their only plot of land to fund her studies to become a doctor, had spent the evening at a shopping centre in south Delhi before catching a bus home with her boyfriend on Sunday.

At 10.24pm police on the outskirts of the capital received a call that a crowd had gathered around a young man and woman who had been found