The body of a 23-year-old college student who was gang-raped in the Indian capital of New Delhi will be flown home from a Singapore private hospital, India' s High Commissioner to Singapore T. C. A. Raghavan said on Saturday.

The young woman died in the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday, 13 days after she was beaten with an iron bar and gang-raped on a moving bus by six men.

Her body was brought to a funeral services firm in the afternoon for embalming. The hearse carrying her body was seen leaving the premises of the funeral services firm at 8:50 p.m. local time.

Raghavan said earlier that a chartered plane carrying her body and her family members will be leaving for India after due procedures.

The young woman was flown to Singapore for treatment at the Mount Elizabeth Hospital on Thursday.

The patient had "remained in an extremely critical condition since admission" and her condition continued to deteriorate despite the best efforts of a team of eight specialists at the hospital, the hospital said.

The patient had signs of severe organ failure and suffered serious injuries to her body and brain. Doctors had put her on maximum artificial ventilation support, optimal antibiotic doses and stimulants which maximize her body's capability to fight infections, it said.

"She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," the hospital said.

The outrageous crime was intensely covered in India in traditional and new media and triggered protests and calls for death penalties for the culprits in India in the several days after the incident. Authorities later moved to disperse and ban such protests.

Following news of the victim's death, there were some protests in certain Indian cities on Saturday but they were largely peaceful.

The Indian police Saturday invoked murder charges against the six men involved in the gang-rape case in an apparent haste to calm down public anger.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Saturday he was deeply saddened by the death of the young woman and that the protests which erupted in the aftermath of her assault were " understandable."

"The need of the hour is a dispassionate debate and inquiry into the critical changes that are required in societal attitudes, " he said in a statement. "I hope that the entire political class and civil society will set aside narrow sectional interests and agenda to help us all reach the end that we all desire - making India a demonstrably better and safer place for women to live in."

"I want to tell them (her family) and the nation that while she may have lost her battle for life, it is up to us all to ensure that her death will not have been in vain," Singh said.

Sex crimes have been rampant in New Delhi in recent years. Official statistics showed there were 572 rape cases in 2011 and more than 600 cases this year, but there could be more unreported cases.

Another woman was gang-raped by three people and dumped in a southern Delhi locality on Wednesday.

Those familiar with life in Delhi said that it is known to be unsafe for young women to travel outdoors in the evening there, as there is an obvious shortage of public transport services in the city of more than 16 million people and the operations of private buses were often not regulated.