Saurabh Das / AP

An Indian woman holds a poster as she protests with others about the handling of sex crimes in India, Monday.

NEW DELHI - A second suspect was arrested Monday in the rape of a 5-year-old girl who New Delhi police say was left for dead in a locked room, a case that has brought a new wave of protests against how Indian authorities handle sex crimes.

Pradeep Kumar, a 19-year-old garment factory worker, was arrested Monday in the eastern state of Bihar, about 620 miles from New Delhi, and was being brought to the capital, police said.

Police said questioning of the first man arrested in the case, Manoj Kumar, led them to the second suspect. Manoj Kumar, 24, was arrested Saturday in Bihar and flown back to New Delhi. Kumar is a common last name in India and the two men are not related.

The men are accused of abducting, raping and attempting to murder the 5-year-old, who went missing April 15 and was found two days later by neighbors who heard her crying in a locked room in the same New Delhi building where she lives with her family. The girl was alone when she was found, having been left for dead by her attackers, police say.

The girl was in critical condition when she was transferred Thursday from a local hospital to the largest government-run hospital in the country. D.K. Sharma, medical superintendent of the state-run hospital in New Delhi where the girl was being treated, said Monday that she was responding well to treatment and that her condition had stabilized.

"She is much better today and her wounds are healing well," Sharma told reporters.

The attack came four months after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus sparked outrage across India about the treatment of women in the country.

For the third consecutive day, sporadic protests erupted in at least three places in New Delhi. Scores of supporters of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party dodged a huge police cordon and managed to reach the gates of India's Parliament where they shouted slogans against the Delhi police's tardy handling of the case. About 100 BJP supporters were detained. Police said they would be held at a nearby police station and then releases in a few hours.

Separately, about 100 women protested at another venue near the Parliament building. Most of the protests were directed against the Delhi police officers who failed to act after the girl's parents told them she was missing.

The protesters have demanded that the Delhi police chief be removed from office and that police officials accused of failing to act on the parents' complaint be dismissed.

"Police and other officials that fail to do their jobs and instead engage in abusive behavior should know that they will be punished," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for changes in attitudes toward women in India. "The gruesome assault on the little girl a few days back reminds us once again of the need to work collectively to root out this sort of depravity from our society," Singh said Sunday at a meeting with civil servants.

The December gang rape on a New Delhi bus sparked outrage and spurred the government to pass tough laws for crimes against women, including the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim's death.

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Defense attorney blames victim in India gang-rape, murder case

Manan Vatsyayana / AFP - Getty Images

Media representatives surround an ambulance as it leaves the main entrance of Tihar Jail in New Delhi on Monday.

NEW DELHI -- The alleged ringleader in the gang-rape and death of a young Indian woman in December hanged himself in jail on Monday, officials said, a dramatic twist in a case that has provoked outrage across India.

Ram Singh's lawyer said his client had been composed and calm when he spoke to him on Friday and that there were other inmates in his cell in New Delhi's Tihar jail, raising questions about whether it was a suicide and how it could have gone unnoticed by staff in India's highest security prison.

The lawyer and a prison official said Singh had not been on suicide watch.

Police have described Singh as the ringleader of five men and a juvenile on trial for the December 16 attack on the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist on a bus in the Indian capital. Singh was driving the bus.

All six accused have pleaded not guilty to rape and murder.

The assault triggered nationwide protests, a toughening of rape laws and an intense debate about rampant crime against women in India.

Tihar prison authorities ordered a magisterial inquiry after Singh was found hanging in his cell at around 5 a.m. (7 p.m. ET Sunday), prison spokesman Sunil Gupta said.

Singh's lawyer, V.K. Anand, told Reuters that his client did not appear to be distressed when he spoke to him on Friday.

"I believe he was satisfied with the way the trial was proceeding because we had a very strong case against the prosecution's claims," he said.

"This is not suicide, this is something else. I know he had a few complaints of jail authorities torturing him, but nothing that would make him take his own life. We can't rule out foul play. Nothing is adding up," he said.

Manish Swarup / AP

The mother of Ram Singh cries as she speaks to journalists inside the family's home in New Delhi on Monday.

Anand has previously always denied that his client was being maltreated in prison. He did not elaborate on the "torture".

Singh had been kept in a cell with other inmates, he said.

A former director of the jail, Kiran Bedi, said Singh should have been kept isolated from the main prison population.

The trial of the five adult men started last month while the juvenile's trial began last week. Ram Singh's brother Mukesh Singh, gym assistant Vinay Sharma, bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh and fruit vendor Pawan Kumar are the other men on trial.

Under Indian law, the juvenile cannot be named.

The attack generated headlines around the world, but the case has since largely disappeared from public view, in large part because authorities have barred reporting on the trial, which was due to resume in a fast-track court on Monday.

Police allege the six attacked the woman and a male companion on the bus as the couple returned home after watching a movie on December 16. The woman was repeatedly raped and tortured with a metal bar. The couple were also severely beaten before being thrown onto a road.

The woman died of internal injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks later.

The police report used to charge the accused draws a picture of Ram Singh as the ringleader. On the night of December 16, the accused gathered at his house for dinner, where he came up with the plan of taking the bus out to look for a victim to rape, the report said.

The police say they found him sitting in the blood-stained school bus, wearing a bloodied T-shirt, the morning after the crime. A DNA test revealed that the blood belonged to the rape victim, the report said.

Related:

5 accused men plead not guilty in India gang rape

India gang-rape victim's father: Hang the 'monsters' responsible

India gang-rape victim dies in hospital; case focuses attention on sexual violence

This story was originally published on Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:22 PM EDT

NEW DELHI - The trial of five men charged with gang-raping and murdering a young woman on a bus in New Delhi opened on Tuesday with closed-door testimony from her male friend who appeared at court in a wheelchair, still bearing the scars of injuries from the attack.

Anindito Mukherjee / EPA

A Delhi police van arrives at the Delhi Saket court in New Delhi, India, Tuesday.

The 28-year-old software engineer, who may not be identified, is the prosecution's star witness in a case that has triggered nationwide protests, an intense debate about rampant crime against women in India and tougher anti-rape laws.

The five accused are Vinay Sharma, a gym assistant, Ram Singh, the bus driver, his brother Mukesh Singh, bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh and fruit vendor Pawan Kumar.

They have pleaded not guilty to charges of rape and murder. A sixth accused is being tried separately as a juvenile.

Police allege the six attacked the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist and her friend on the bus as the couple returned home from watching a movie on Dec. 16.

The woman was repeatedly raped and tortured with a metal bar. The couple were also severely beaten before being thrown onto a road.

The woman died of internal injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks later.

Victim's father: Hang them
As the trial got under way, the victim's father made a surprise appearance at a news conference organized by the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to call for his daughter's attackers to be hanged.

At one stage, the friend, defense lawyers and some policemen moved from the courtroom to a courtyard where the bus on which police say the attack took place was parked.

Journalists saw some of them board the vehicle, which was white with tinted windows and orange curtains. Above the windshield was painted "Praise the Goddess" in Hindi.

The victim's friend was not seen boarding the bus. The friend's father said later it was the second time his son had seen the bus since the attack.

In his statement to police after the assault, the friend said their attackers had asked "where are you going with a girl so late at night?" before launching a furious assault in which he was beaten with a metal rod and his clothes ripped off.

While he was being beaten, the woman was repeatedly raped, he said, according to a police charge sheet seen by Reuters.

The prosecution says articles stolen from the couple, including their cellphones, rings and debit cards were found in raids conducted on the homes of the accused. DNA evidence and bloodstained clothes also form part of their case.

Defense lawyers say they will highlight what they say are discrepancies in the account given by the victim's friend.

The five men are being tried in a special fast-track court opposite the shopping mall where the victim and her friend went to watch the film "Life of Pi" before boarding the bus.

About 30 policemen were deployed outside the courtroom on Tuesday as the five accused arrived wearing scarves or handkerchiefs to mask their faces. 

Related:

Indian cabinet moves to toughen laws on rape, crimes against women

Video: Father of rape victim speaks about her dreams, final days

Attorney in gang rape case blames victim

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Richa Singh, 24, who works for an online travel portal, says, "women are seen as objects in this city, it doesn't matter what I wear, I still get stared at by men on the streets."

Since the death of a medical student who was gang raped on a bus in New Delhi the issue of women's security has been under the spotlight as never before in India. Mansi Thapliyal, a female Indian photographer working for Reuters, interviewed a variety of women in New Delhi to find out how they feel about their safety since the rape.

Reactions were strong and wide ranging, from women who now feel they need to arm themselves or take self-defense classes, to others who are scared to go out alone at night.

"My city is known as the so-called rape capital of the country," Thapliyal wrote in a blog post on Reuters.com. "They say it’s unsafe, it’s dangerous, and it’s full of wolves looking to hunt you down." Read her entire blog post on Reuters.com.

Thapliyal decided to focus her camera on the city’s women to find what they think about their security, and how they are protecting themselves. Below is a collection of her photos shot earlier this month, and made available to NBC News today. 

Aanchal Sukhija, 19, studying fashion media communication, said that whenever she hires an auto rickshaw she has to send a short message to her father giving details of the auto in order to feel secure.

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Aanchal Sukhija waits for an auto rickshaw outside a metro station in Gurgaon on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Nalini Bharatwaj, 37, chairperson of a management institute, says "Half of the time I am alone with my children and sometimes I have to travel late at night from work. It's enough to shut up anyone trying to molest me or even pass a comment if I flaunt my gun." 

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Nalini Bharatwaj, holds a gun while posing in her office in New Delhi.

Deepshikha Bharadwaj, 24, who works for an advertising agency, has posted the notice that reads, 'Sorry I am not staying late now,' on her desk and said she wanted to send a message to her colleagues that she is not going to work late in the office anymore.

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Deepshikha Bharadwaj stands inside an elevator in her office on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Sweety, 22,a student, travels four hours every day from her village to the city to learn karate and taekwondo. She said, "boys in my village are scared to tease me after I beat up one boy who was passing lewd comments on me."

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Sweety, takes a self defense class in New Delhi.

Simrat, 24, who works for a non-profit arts organization, said, “I made the decision to use public transport as my primary way of moving through the city because I really believe that it is my right to be able to use public space, just as much as it is of any man."

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Simrat travels in the women's compartment of a metro in New Delhi.

Chandani, 22, who works as a cab driver for a social enterprise which claims to provide safe and secure cab services for women driven by women, said demand for their cabs has increased.

 "I am doing a very unconventional job for women,” she said. “Given that I do night shifts, I carry pepper spray bottle and I'm trained in self-defense. Initially I faced a lot of problems but driving cabs at night has helped me to overcome my fears.”

Mansi Thapliyal / Reuters

Chandani sits inside her car on a street in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI -- Three of the men accused of raping and murdering an Indian student in a moving bus will plead not guilty to the charges, their lawyer said on Wednesday, citing lapses in the police investigation.

Five men have been charged for the assault on the woman in a case that has provoked such outrage that lawyers in the district where the case is being heard have refused to defend the men.

Manohar Lal Sharma, who will represent the bus driver and the main accused, his brother and another man, said the case must go to trial so that the evidence police have presented can be tested in court.

"We are only hearing what the police are saying. This is manipulated evidence. It's all on the basis of hearsay and presumption," said Sharma.

It is not yet known if two other accused men have a lawyer, while a sixth accused will be tried separately because he is a minor.

The five defendants are scheduled to appear at another pre-trial hearing on Thursday that is expected to result in the case being sent to a special "fast-track" court. Indian courts are notoriously slow, with some cases dragging on for decades. 

Authorities have charged the men with murder, rape and other crimes that could bring them the death penalty. The crime caused nationwide outrage, leading to massive protests.

Blood stains
A sixth suspect, who is 17 years old, is expected to be tried in a juvenile court, where the maximum sentence would be three years in a reform facility.

Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan said last week that a DNA test confirmed that the blood of the victim matched blood stains found on the clothes of all the accused.

On Sunday, two of the defendants offered to become "approvers," or informers against the others, according to reporters present at the hearing. The two were presumably seeking lighter sentences.

The companion of the student recounted in a television interview last week how the pair was attacked for 2 1/2 hours on a New Delhi bus before being thrown on the side of the road, where passersby ignored them and police debated jurisdiction issues before helping them. The student died at a Singapore hospital weeks after the Dec. 16 attack.

The attack has led to calls for tougher rape laws and reforms of a police culture that often blames rape victims and refuses to file charges against accused attackers. The nation's top law enforcement official said the country needs to crack down on crimes against women.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related stories from NBC News:

• India gang-rape victim's father: Hang the 'monsters' responsible
• 'Nobody helped us for an hour,' Indian rape witness says

Passers-by left a gang-raped Indian student lying unclothed and bleeding in the street for almost an hour, a male friend who was assaulted with her said on Friday in his first public comments on the case that provoked a global outcry.

The 23-year-old student died in the hospital two weeks after she was attacked on Dec. 16 in a private bus in New Delhi, prompting street protests over the Indian authorities' failure to stem rampant violence against women.

The graphic account from the man in a television interview is likely to add fuel to public anger over the death in a country where official statistics show one rape is reported every 20 minutes.

The woman's friend told the Zee News television network he was beaten unconscious with a metal bar by her attackers before the pair were thrown off the bus.

They lay in the street for 45 minutes before a police van arrived and officers then spent a long time arguing about where to take them, the man said.

"We kept shouting at the police, 'please give us some clothes' but they were busy deciding which police station our case should be registered at," the man said in Hindi.

Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told Reuters GPS records show the first police van reached the scene four minutes after it was were called and took the man and the woman to hospital within 24 minutes.

Neither the woman nor her friend have been named. Five men were charged with her gang rape and murder on Thursday. A court is due to consider the charges on Saturday.

Twitter anger
The man's comments caused an renewed outpouring of anger on Twitter. "After reading and watching the Zee News interview i'm absolutely shocked and ashamed of being an Indian," said @BarunKiBilli.

The man called on the protests to continue, but said he wished people had come to his friend's help when she needed it.

"You have to help people on the road when they need help."

The male friend said he and the woman were attacked after an evening out watching a film.

"From where we boarded the bus, they (the attackers) moved around for nearly two and a half hours. We were shouting, trying to make people hear us. But they switched off the lights of the bus," he said, according to a transcript of the interview.

When they were thrown out, they pleaded with passers-by for help, he added in the studio interview, a blue metal crutch leaning on his chair.

"There were a few people who had gathered round but nobody helped. Before the police came I screamed for help but the auto rickshaws, cars and others passing by did not stop," the man added.

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Anindito Mukherjee / EPA

Indian students and activists shout slogans and hold placards as they participate in a protest against the recent brutal gang-rape in New Delhi, Dec. 27. The 23 year old girl who was gang-raped by 6 men on a moving bus on the night of 16 December 2012 has been shifted to Singapore hospital for further treatment.

Anindito Mukherjee / EPA

Indian security forces face students and activists shouting slogans, during a protest against the recent brutal gang-rape in New Delhi on Dec. 27.

Altaf Qadri / AP

Indian protesters shout slogans while demonstrating against the recent gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 27.

By Reuters

Police thwarted an attempt by activists on Thursday to rekindle mass protests in New Delhi over the Dec. 16 gang rape and ferocious beating of a young woman, after the victim was airlifted to Singapore for specialist hospital care to save her life.

Activists who gathered on Thursday for a fresh march on India Gate were stopped by police in riot gear armed with tear gas and water cannons to hold them back.

"We will win back our freedom!" the protesters, mostly university students, shouted as they pushed against barricades on a road leading to the city's landmark monument. Unable to make further headway, the crowd dispersed as night fell.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex attacks among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to the National Crimes Records Bureau.

Continue reading.

Saurabh Das / AP

Policemen stop protesters from approaching a barricade on their way to India Gate while protesting against a recent gang-rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 27.

Altaf Qadri / AP

Indian protesters listen to a speaker during a protest against a recent gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 27.

Altaf Qadri / AP

Indian police stand guard in front of a barricade as protesters march towards them during a protest against a recent gang rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 27.

Related content: 

• Protesters clash with police in India over gang rape of medical student
• Tear gas used to quell India gang-rape protests
• Fury, anguish after hours-long gang-rape in India

Sajjad Hussain / AFP - Getty Images

Several thousands students rallied at the India Gate monument in New Delhi on Sunday.

NEW DELHI - The Indian government moved on Sunday to stamp out protests that have swelled in New Delhi since the gang-rape of a 23-year-old female medical student, banning gatherings of more than five people, but still thousands poured into the heart of the capital to vent their anger. 

Police in riot gear used tear gas and batons to hold crowds back from marching on the presidential palace, just as they did the day before in clashes that media reports said injured more than two dozen protesters.

Doctors said the victim of last week's attack, who was beaten, raped for almost an hour by four men and then thrown out of a moving city bus in New Delhi, was still in a critical condition on respiratory support but responding to treatment.

New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures.

Sajjad Hussain / AFP - Getty Images

Demonstrators in New Delhi throw stones at police during a protest calling for better safety for women, Sunday.

Most sexual assaults go unreported and unremarked, but the brutality of last week's attack triggered the biggest protests in the capital since mid-2011 demonstrations against corruption that rocked the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The protesters, predominantly college students but also housewives and even children, are demanding more steps from the authorities to ensure safety for women and some want the death penalty for the accused.

Several city metro stations were closed and several roads were barricaded on Sunday to prevent a build-up of protesters.

However, by early afternoon the crowd around the India Gate monument - normally a festive place on a Sunday -- had swelled to more than 2,000, according to police there. Scuffles broke out near government buildings, where youths shouted "Down with Delhi police!" and threw bottles at the forces holding them back.

Sajjad Hussain / AFP - Getty Images

New Delhi police fire tear gas to quell the biggest protest so far at the rape of a student last week.

Bowing to public pressure, Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress party, emerged from her residence after midnight to talk to protesters. She went out again on Sunday with her son, Rahul Gandhi, who is seen as a future prime minister.

"She assured us of justice," said one of the students who met the Gandhis, though some in the crowds shouted "Down with Sonia Gandhi!"

Since last week's rape, the authorities have promised better police patrolling to ensure safety for women returning from work and entertainment districts, the installation of GPS on public transport vehicles, more buses at night, and fast-track courts for swift verdicts on cases of rape and sexual assault. 

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