India photo shoot sparks outrage for ‘glamorizing’ rape

A controversial Indian fashion shoot sparked outrage and calls for legal action on Wednesday after critics said it glamorized sexual violence against women by evoking a fatal gang rape that took place in New Delhi less than two years ago.

The photos were part of a project by Mumbai-based photographer Raj Shetye called "The Wrong Turn." The images appeared in his online portfolio in recent days before being taken down after drawing a torrent of criticism on social media in India.

In December 2012, the fatal gang rape of a student — who became known as Nirbhaya, or fearless — on a bus triggered nationwide protests and contributed to the tightening of anti-rape laws last year.

The photos feature a female model dressed in high-end fashion garments being groped on a bus by a group of men, also stylishly dressed, in various poses. In one image, the woman is on the floor with a man standing over her, while one shows her struggling with two men gripping her arms, and another has two men pinning her down on the seats.

“Did I just see a fashion-spread depicting the Delhi gangrape of Nirbhaya? Disgusting! I hope all associated, die of shame! Insensitive swine!” tweeted Bollywood music director Vishal Dadlani.

Nirmala Samant, chairwoman of the National Commission for Women, has written to Mumbai's chief of police calling for an investigation over the photographs.

"Any person with common sense will understand this is nothing but glorifying of violence," Samant told Agence France-Presse. "I'm of the strong opinion that there should be some legal action because this is not artistic freedom, certainly not."

Shetye, for his part, issued a statement in defense of his work, saying he had "tried to express myself through the medium I know best" and that the controversy was based on misinterpretation. 

"The aim is purely to create art that will garner public opinion about issues that concern women," he said. "It breaks my heart to see my mother, my friends, my sister constraining themselves professionally and personally just to be safe." 

He also said the clothes' designers had not been credited as the shoot was not for commercial gain.

But the parallels to the New Delhi incident in the photo shoot constituted a "huge blunder," according to Delhi-based journalist Rudroneel Ghosh. 

"When you get models to dress up in stylish couture and enact a gang-rape scene, but minus the dread and terror, you end up glamorizing a crime against women," Ghosh wrote in a blog for the Times of India.

The New Delhi bus gang rape involved six men who attacked a 23-year-old physiotherapy student after she was tricked into boarding a private bus on the way home from a movie theater with a male friend. The woman died from her injuries 13 days after the attack.

Four men were convicted and sentenced to death last year over the 2012 attack. Another was found dead in his cell in an apparent suicide, and a juvenile was sentenced to the maximum of three years in detention.

Several other high-profile rape cases in India have made international headlines since the New Delhi bus incident, including two teen girls who were raped and killed, with their bodies being found hanging from a tree in late May. 

India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised "zero tolerance" toward crimes against women. The country made its anti-rape laws stricter last year, making gang rape punishable by death and making stalking and acid attacks specific crimes. 

Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse