Then he continued to stab her again and again, each time more brutally than before. At one point, he paused to kick her in the head.

As the man continued to stab the young woman, who was writhing in pain in clear view of every passerby, several people wandered by. Some ignored the scene entirely, while others glanced over and kept walking.

One man in a backpack and another man stuck around, waving their hands helplessly in the air. At one point, a person on a motorbike stopped and seemed to speak to the attacker as he continued stabbing the woman. But by then, the woman had stopped writhing. She was still.

AD

AD

No one took any action to stop the horror, according to the video. Within seconds, everyone wandered off, leaving the woman’s body to lie along the street.

In all, she was stabbed 22 times, according to the Indian Express, though some outlets reported that number to be as high as 30.

(The video can be found here, but warning: the content is extremely disturbing.)

The woman’s name was Karuna Kumar, and Indian media outlets report her age as 21 or 22.

The alleged attacker is 34-year-old Aditya Malik, who also goes by Surender Singh, according to the Indian Express. After the attack, the man fled the scene but was finally accosted by several bystanders who held him down until police arrived.

AD

By then it was too late. The woman was rushed to a hospital but was declared dead on arrival.

Violence against women is a major problem in India, and it’s getting worse, by all accounts, with more than 800 women per day harassed, raped or killed.

AD

Police said the man had stalked Karuna for a year before the attack, and she was well aware of it.

“The accused had been troubling the victim for at least one year,” Deputy Police Commissioner Madhur Verma told the Indian Express. “He committed the brazen attack when the victim was heading towards the Novel Reaches School, where she had been working as a teacher for the last four months.”

The two had met about a year and a half earlier at computer classes taught by the man. Karuna, aspiring to be a schoolteacher, had signed up.

AD

At the time, her father, Naresh, had planned to marry her to someone from his ancestral village in the state of Uttar Pradesh. But the man was interested, Karuna’s family said.

“Surender treated her like a regular student for the first few years, but was [attempting to force] her to marry him these past one and a half years,” Karuna’s aunt Chandrawati told the Times of India. “Her family asked her to discontinue with the computer classes after this.”

AD

After she did and rejected his proposal, he allegedly began stalking her, according to another relative, Nagesh, who spoke with the New Indian Express.

“After Karuna refused his proposal, he started following her,” Nagesh said. “She complained to his father about Surender advances.”

AD

Then, in May, the man attacked her with the jagged edge of a beer bottle after following her to a metro station, the Times of India reported.

“He accused her of posing for a photograph with his friend and threatened to kill her,” Karuna’s uncle Vina told the Times of India. “Karuna had tried to reason it out with Surender, but he was adamant.”

Karuna went to the Burari police but, according to the Times of India, the man’s relatives intervened before the police took action.

“Karuna’s parents filed [a] police complaint against Surender. After which Surender and his parents apologized for his behavior and requested to withdraw police complaint,” Nagesh told the New Indian Express.

AD

AD

According to Nagesh, the police complaint was withdrawn on Surender’s parents’ request.

They promised that he would stop stalking the girl.

But on Tuesday, he found her alone and, with one blade from a pair of scissors, killed her, police said.

That no one intervened with the attack troubled some.

“I have seen the video and people are standing as mute spectators,” Delhi’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, told the Indian Express. “One or two people tried to come forward but no one helped finally. We have to introspect as a society. Criminals do not have fear of the police.”

Dolly Bindra, an Indian actress living in Mumbai, posted this to Facebook:

AD

21 year old karuna girl was killed in broad daylight stabbed 20 times it’s a shame to all of us that we who was present there watching and not helping and today the girl is no more stalked by this man now why waste time we all have seen him killing on news via cctv footage hang this guy now what investigation now it’s over girl is killed, dead kill this guy now need not waste a minute. Kill him. Now hang him openly now in front of all public the way he stabbed the girl

Others expressed anger with India’s police.

Police say they have ordered a preliminary investigation into the man.

According to the Indian Express, Karuna was the third woman attacked by a stalker in 48 hours in Delhi, India’s capital city. A 25-year-old was thrown from a building after being followed, and a 28-year-old was fatally stabbed at least 10 times.

AD

More from Morning Mix