NEW DELHI - The 23-year-old rape victim's male friend has given an interview to a leading private news channel saying the physiotherapy student wanted to live, even after the ordeal.

"She was positive and was telling her mother that everything would be okay," the 28-year old software engineer, who suffered a fractured leg and other injuries in the attack, told Zee News. While his face was shown during the interview, his name was withheld.

Days after the attack, the unidentified rape victim was flown in critical condition to Singapore for specialist treatment, but she did not survive.

Commenting on the Indian government's decision to take her to Singapore for better treatment, he said: "I felt it was all a script. So much protests are taking place so let us send her to Singapore. This decision if they were sympathetic they should have taken it at the right time."

"If I am thirsty what is the point of giving me water after I am dead," he remarked.

"I saw that whatever decision was taken it was done under pressure," he told the television channel.

In the extensive interview, he said that the six men had lured them into the bus and even taken ticket money from them.

Some of them were posing as passengers in the bus.

"They started abusing us," he said.

"They threw a punch. First, it was three of them and then two more came with a rod. My friend was screaming and was trying to save me, They hit with me with a rod on the head and I became semi conscious. They took my friend to the back," he said.

"For two and a half hours they drove the bus over flyover all over Delhi," he said, recalling the horror that took place on December 16, after they both boarded a bus with tinted windows to go home after watching a movie.

Six men in the bus, including the driver, soon picked a fight with the couple and attacked them.

The girl was gangraped and beaten up while her male friend who tried to resist was also beaten up.

The two were then stripped and thrown on the street of Delhi on a cold Delhi night.

The accused also tried to run them over.

"Their intention was to kill us," he said, adding that the ordeal didn't end there and no one stopped to help them.

Finally, after 20 minutes, they got help and the police was called in.

"A lot has happened," he said.

"Protests are taking place, people came on to the streets I felt that I needed to tell what happened that night. May be this story will help somebody else," he noted, explaining his decision to come forward.

He said that he knew there was a long fight ahead of him.