Tears and despair at Ravi Dass Camp
nNEW DELHI: The news of the impending execution of the four men convicted in the December 16 gang rape case played loudly from a television in a Ravi Dass Camp house. Next to it, inside a one-room house, the parents of one of the convicts, Vinay Sharma, wept inconsolably. It was late Thursday afternoon, just minutes after a city court cleared the way for the hanging.
“We are their neighbours, not their relatives. We’ll stand with them when the body of their son arrives tomorrow, but we cannot do anything more for them,” a woman resident of the house with the TV said, before closing its doors.
In south Delhi’s Ravi Dass Camp—home to four of the six persons convicted in the case— the court’s order on Thursday afternoon brought many residents out on the streets, who remained divided in their opinion about the hanging scheduled to be carried out at 5.30am on Friday.
“The hanging will bring an end to the troubled past of this slum. We’ll be able to go about our lives without the constant shadow of the media over us. It will also allow the parents of the convicts to start life afresh,” Arun (known by his first name only), a resident, said.
The sentiment was echoed by Kapil Dev, a neighbour of Vinay’s parents.
“They were crying. I told them their pain was about to end,” Dev said.
Some others, mostly women of the neighbourhood, said they expected the death sentence to be commuted to life in prison. The families of two of these convicts, meanwhile, broke into angry outbursts on hearing the court’s decision.
“On the one hand the world is fighting to save lives from a disease, while on the other, some people are celebrating death (news of the hanging),” one of the women said.
She insisted that all the four convicts were innocent and that Ram Singh— one of the accused men, who had killed himself in jail—was the only culprit.
A few houses away, Bharti, the sister of another convict Pawan, too, insisted that innocent men had been framed while the real culprits got away. “I am going to meet my brother for one last time,” she said.
The house in which the widowed mother of convict Mukesh Singh lives remained locked from the outside.
›
We are their neighbours, not their relatives. We’ll stand with them when the body of their son arrives tomorrow.
A WOMAN RESIDENT OF RAVI DASS CAMP
›
The hanging will bring an end to the troubled past of this slum... It will also allow the parents of the convicts to start life afresh.
ARUN, resident, Ravi Dass Camp