New Delhi: The rage spread, rapidly and steadily, through India’s national capital on Saturday as students, activists and just concerned citizens gathered at India Gate to protest the torture and gang-rape of a young woman, now battling to stay alive in a Delhi hospital.

Some demanding capital punishment to the perpetrators of the heinous crime, some chanting slogans against government’s apathy, some protesting against Delhi police laxity, the angry protesters are demanding justice for the 23-year-old paramedical student, who was raped by a gang of six men in a moving bus in Delhi on Sunday night.

On Friday, the protests literally reached President Pranab Mukherjee’s doorstep, with angry demonstrators going right up till the gates of Rashtrapati Bhavan and one even managing to enter the complex. The Delhi Police have also nabbed the two men who were at large.

Hundreds later reached 10 Janpath, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s official residence, and held candle march and noisy protests. Police erected barricades and stopped anyone from entering her heavily fortified residence.

The parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, on its part, summoned Union Home Secretary RK Singh and Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar on December 27 to discuss atrocities against women and the law and order situation in the national capital.

RK Singh and Neeraj Kumar later held a press conference yesterday and said they will be seeking “maximum punishment” for the accused persons. They said they will seek fast-track and day-to-day trial in the case that has shocked the nation.

But the Delhi High Court said it is not “convinced” with the status report filed by the Delhi Police which did not mention the details of police officials patrolling the area where the woman was gang-raped and tortured in a moving bus.

A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said: “We have gone through the report and we are not convinced. None of the details of the police officials has been mentioned,” expressing its displeasure at the police for not filing the detailed report.

Faced with the growing outrage, with protests not just in New Delhi but also elsewhere in the country, the Delhi Police arrested two more accused, including one who has claimed that he is a juvenile. The sixth man identified as Akshay Thakur has been arrested from Aurangabad in Bihar.

Rarely, if ever, have so many people taken to the streets in so many different places for a single cause. It was an unstoppable momentum.

Demanding justice and fast track courts, many people have rallied in protest in the capital in the days since the incident on Sunday night, when the physiotherapist intern was brutally assaulted and her male friend beaten in a moving bus. Both were stripped and dumped by the roadside near the domestic airport after the nearly 40-minute ordeal.

The residence of Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit and the police headquarters have all witnessed the spontaneous outpouring of anger.

As people hit the streets of Delhi to vent their grief and anger, the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in central Delhi offered the victim free intestinal transplant.

Doctors treating the woman said their focus was on providing her the best treatment as her life was at grave risk. She underwent surgery to remove a gangrenous section of intestine, and there was risk of infection.

The young woman and her uncertain future were focal points for the entire nation, even for a group of Muslim clerics in Mumbai who said rape could only be stemmed through a change in the present “capitalistic, patriarchal” social system.

Demanding justice for the girl, the clerics said in a statement: “The Delhi gang-rape is a horrifying and spine chilling incident.”