College girl killed in Delhi in rare daylight shooting

A gunman shot and killed a woman student near her college in New Delhi on Tuesday, police said, in a rare daylight shooting that spotlighted violence against women in the Indian capital.

Radhika Tanwar, 21, of Ramlal Anand College, was shot in the stomach at close range on a footbridge 1.5 kilometres (one mile) from the college, police and a faculty member said.

"There was one man who fired at her," police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP, adding that efforts were underway to find the gunman, who fled after the shooting.

The girl bled to death while being taken to hospital by a passer-by, witnesses said.

Other officers said the killer could have been a stalker.

A college professor who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said the gunman appeared to be a student from a nearby college.

The Indian capital last year registered a total of 489 rapes, compared with 459 in 2009.
Women's rights groups say many attacks also go unreported.

Reported instances of sexual molestation such as groping of women also went up to 585 last year against 528 in 2009, official records show.

The mass-circulation Hindustan Times, citing a local poll, said this month that 66 percent of New Delhi's female residents were molested between two and five times last year.

The attack also angered the autonomous National Commission of Women, which condemned Tanwar's murder, while a city MP from India's ruling Congress party blamed the lawlessness on the federal home ministry.

The attack on International Women's Day came a day after city police chief B.K. Gupta claimed a 44 percent decline in attacks on women in the first three months of 2011 compared with the first quarter of last year.

Gupta also said some 1,000 female police recruits were learning unarmed combat and some were undergoing commando training.

Traffic policewomen recently complained that they were harrased and even groped by passing motorists in New Delhi.