India gang-rape victim dies in Singapore

Doctors have announced that a young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus in India's capital, New Delhi, has died at their Singapore hospital.

A statement by Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital where the 23-year-old victim was being treated said she "died peacefully" early on Saturday.

"We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4.45am [local time] on December 29, 2012," Kelvin Loh, the chief executive of Mount Elizabeth Hospital, said in a statement.

"Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days," Loh continued.

The statement said her family and officials from the High Commission of India were by her side.

Back in Singapore, the hospital said the woman, a paramedic student, had remained in an extremely critical condition since Thursday when she was flown to Singapore from India.

By late Friday, her condition had "taken a turn for the worse" and her vital signs had indicated severe organ failure, the hospital had earlier said.

She had also suffered a heart attack, a lung and abdominal infection and "significant" brain injury, it said.

The attack on 16 December triggered violent public protests in India that left one police officer dead.

Six men have been arrested in connection with the rape and two police officers have been suspended.

As news of the woman's death spread, police sealed off large parts of central Delhi, closed down a number of metro railway stations and asked people not to travel into the city.

Hundreds of armed police and riot troops are on duty, many of them women, and Delhi's police commissioner Neeraj Kumar has called on the public to remain calm.

Gatherings of more than five people have been banned in the city centre. There have also been calls for protests in cities across the country.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "very saddened" by the woman's death, and that the angry public reaction was "perfectly understandable".

"It would be a true homage to her memory if we are able to channel these emotions and energies into a constructive course of action," he said in a statement.

He called on politicians and the public to set aside "narrow sectional interest" and work together to make India "a demonstrably better and safer place for women to live in".

The woman - a medical student - and her friend had been to see a film when they boarded the bus in the Munirka area of Delhi, intending to travel to Dwarka in the south-west of the city.

Police said she was raped for nearly an hour, and both she and her companion were beaten with iron bars, then thrown out of the moving bus into the street.

The assault sparked angry protests about the general conditions for women in India, and about what is seen as an inadequate police response to rape allegations.

Officials have since announced a series of measures intended to make Delhi safer for women.

These include more police night patrols, checks on bus drivers and their assistants, and the banning of buses with tinted windows or curtains.

The government has also said that it will post the photos, names and addresses of convicted rapists on official websites to shame them.

It has set up two committees - one looking into speeding up trials of cases involving sexual assaults on women, and the other to examine the lapses that might have led to the incident in Delhi.

But the protesters say the government's pledge to seek life sentences for the attackers is not enough - many are calling for the death penalty.