New Delhi:Four of the men held guilty of raping and torturing a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012 will hang, the Supreme Court said today, describing the crime as a “story of a different world”. The court referred to the dying declaration of the young woman and said the “brutal and demonic” crime had been proved beyond doubt.
“If ever a case called for hanging, this was it,” said the three judges, confirming the death penalty handed by two courts.
The verdict was pronounced to loud applause in court, in the presence of the parents of the woman who came to be known as “Nirbhaya” or fearless. Her mother wept silently.
delhi gangrape convict
Nirbhaya case: Convicts had appealed in Supreme Court against their death sentence
“The accused were obsessed about ravishing her life, she was treated as an object of enjoyment,” said the judges, noting that the offence created a “tsunami of shock”. The convicts, they said, also tried to run over the woman and her friend after throwing them off the bus.
Nirbhaya case
Amid outrage and street protests not just in India but also in other parts of the world, four of the rapists were sentenced to death by a trial court in 2013. A year later, the high court confirmed it. But Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh moved the Supreme Court for mercy.
Nirbhaya case
On December 16, 2012, after watching a movie, the physiotherapy student and her friend climbed onto a bus in south Delhi, assured by the driver that they would be dropped off at their destination.
Nirbhaya case
The woman was gang-raped by six men for hours, brutalised with an iron rod and her intestines were pulled out. She died in a Singapore hospital 13 days later, leaving millions in shock.
Nirbhaya case
“I am khush (happy),” said Nirbhaya’s father BN Singh.
Ram Singh, the bus driver, was found hanging in his cell in Tihar jail in March 2013, months before the rapists were convicted. Last year, Vinay Sharma also allegedly tried to commit suicide. The sixth convict was just short of 18 when he was arrested.
Nirbhaya case
He walked out of a correction home in December 2015 after spending three years – the maximum punishment for minors – sparking public outrage and an overhaul of the juvenile law.
Courtesy:ndtv.com
