‘Got justice, was living for this day’
Parents of the victim welcome Supreme Court verdict, say it is gift to their daughter
At 2.20pm on Friday when the court upheld the death sentence of the four convicts in the Delhi 2012 gang-rape case, the mother of the 23-year-old victim said she was happy with the verdict.
“We have got justice,” said the mother.
Hours before the verdict, HT had spoken to the mother who demanded death penalty for the perpetrators of the brutality on her daughter.
“The court must sentence them to death. We won’t settle for life imprisonment. I am alive and kept myself strong only to see this day,” the mother had told HT over phone on Thursday night.
“No, I won’t visit any temple. My fight against them is my religion and duty. I will go to court and pray that they are hanged,” she had said.
The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern would have turned 28 on May 10.
On the evening of December 16, 2012, the young woman was returning home after watching a film — Life of Pi — with her friend when she was raped by six men and thrown off the bus.
The woman died of her injuries at a Singapore hospital on December 29.The Supreme Court announced the verdict exactly four years, four months and eighteen days since the evening of 2012.
The four convicts Pawan Gupta, Vinay Kumar, Akshay Thakur and Mukesh Singh had challenged the death sentence awarded to them by the Delhi high court.
The father of the young woman Badri Nath Singh said he will sleep peacefully tonight.
“She would have turned 28 on May 10 if she had lived. Today’s verdict is a gift for her,” Singh said.
He, however, rued the delay that the courts had taken in delivering justice, and wondered about the fate of other rape victims.
“What about justice for others whose cases are pending in courts,” Singh asked.
But the SC verdict, he added, would give a boost to rape survivors seeking justice.
The parents, who have started a “Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust” to help rape victims, also stressed that their daughter should be identified by her name. Sections of the media have called her Nirbhaya, as the law prohibits naming a rape victim.
“Those who commit such crimes should hang their heads, not us,” Singh said.