7 years, 4 black warrants: Delhi gang-rape convicts finally hanged
INDIA The four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case were hanged at 5:30 am on Friday, more than seven years after committing the heinous crime in which a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was brutally gangraped in a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012, and thrown on the road to die. The woman died of internal injuries nearly two weeks later in a Singapore hospital. There were six men who had committed the crime, but Ram Singh, the bus driver, committed suicide and a juvenile accused was released after spending three years in a reform home. The crime shook the nation, drew international attention and led to passage of stringent laws against rape. The men accused of the crime were convicted within a year - and death sentence upheld by Supreme Court in 2017 - but its execution took painfully long as year after year, the lawyers representing these men took advantage of the legal remedies available to convicts to delay their hanging.
The road to the gallows was full of setbacks for the family of the victim, but her parents continued with the legal battle to see the culprits hanged. “The biggest victory would be when they are hanged,” the woman’s mother said during the course of the trial which saw four death warrants in about two months. The families of the convicts, meanwhile, kept pleading that the legal system should show some mercy and commute their death sentences into life. Some family members also claimed that these convicts are “innocent”. As the final petition was rejected on Thursday, the wife of one of the convicts fainted outside the Delhi court. The four convicts - fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, unemployed Mukesh Singh, bus cleaner Akshay Thakur and gym instructor Vinay Sharma - reached the President’s doorsteps multiple times with requests for mercy, and filed petitions in Supreme Court against their conviction. But all the petitions and requests were rejected.
(Hindustan Times)