All Five Accused in Delhi Gang Rape Plead Not Guilty

The five men charged last month with the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old female student on a bus in New Delhi have all pleaded “not guilty,” the BBC reports, despite what prosecutors have described as a prodigious pile of evidence.

A sixth suspect, whose status as a minor police had been trying to verify, will be tried in juvenile court. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say that phone records and DNA make for a pretty strong case against the five men, who face the added disadvantage of widespread public outrage over what many see as an unwillingness among Indian officials to take sexual assault seriously. Thanks to the maelstrom of anger provoked by the gang rape case, however, the Indian government has been forced to reexamine its handling of sexual assault cases, and on Friday, India’s cabinet approved most of the recommendations made by a commission set up to review sex crime laws after news broke of the Delhi rape case.