The Supreme Court (SC) has confirmed death for 4 convicts in Nirbhaya gang-rape case in Delhi. SC said today, the four men held guilty of raping and torturing a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012 will hang. The court has described the crime as a “story of a different world” and also referred to the dying declaration of the young woman and said the “brutal and demonic” crime had been proved.
A bench of three judges was constructed for the case. Justices Dipak Misra, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan were the key members of the bench. They have rejected the convicts’ and commented that the act seemed to be a demonic world in which humanity was totally absent.
The bench also said that the circumstances far outweigh the mitigating circumstances in the crime. This case had created outrage in society and the court said that nothing short of a death sentence, awarded in the rarest of rare cases which will satisfy the demands of the society for justice.
The convicts for the case are Vinay Sharma (age-23), Akshay Thakur (age-31), Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22). They were awarded death sentence by a trial court in September 2013. On 13th March 2014, the Delhi high court upheld their conviction. The matter was pending in Supreme Court since then because the convicts approached the SC which stayed their execution in 2014.
Considering the complexity of this case and the public passion involved, the Supreme Court appointed two senior advocates last year, Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde, as amicus curiae to defend the convicts. Both the advocates urged the court that the convicts should not be awarded the extreme punishment and pleaded for their lives.
In December 2012, the medical student and her friend climbed onto a bus in south Delhi and were assured by the bus driver that they will be dropped off at their destination. The woman was gang-raped by 6 men, brutalized with an iron rod and her intestines were pulled out. After 13 days, she died in a Singapore hospital.
The judges said, “She was treated as an object of enjoyment. The accused were obsessed about ravishing her life” noting that the offense created a “tsunami of shock”. The convicts also tried to run over them (women and her friend) after dumping them naked and bleeding, on a road.
In March 2013, the bus driver was found hanging in his cell in Tihar jail, few months before the rapists were convicted. The 6th convict was just short of eighteen when he was arrested.
Now Nirbhaya’s mother, Asha Devi said, “I am happy”. Her father BN Singh added, “It’s not just a victory for my family, it’s a victory for each and every woman in our country.”
