CELEBRATIONS MARK DEATH OF 4 RAPISTS
Nirbhaya convicts didn’t put up any resistance when taken to the gallows
A large, boisterous crowd had assembled outside Tihar Jail in Delhi on Thursday-Friday night to bear witness to the hanging of the four men convicted of the gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya (fearless), in December 2012.
While a group of people chanted “death to rapists” outside, the executions were being carried out inside Tihar as per the guidelines under the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018.
Sources said bus cleaners Mukesh Singh (32) and Akshay Thakur (31), fruitseller Pawan Gupta (25) and gym instructor Vinay Sharma (26) — the four men convicted of the brutal rape and murder of Nirbhaya — didn’t put up any resistance when they were being taken to the gallows. Jail officials said the convicts did not show any sign of anxiety the night before their execution, though they all skipped breakfast.
A large, boisterous crowd had assembled outside Tihar Jail in Delhi on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday to bear witness to the hanging of four men convicted of gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya (Fearless), in December 2012.
While a group of people chanted “Death to rapists” outside, inside Tihar the executions were being carried out as per the guidelines prescribed under the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018.
Sources said bus cleaners Mukesh Singh (32) and Akshay Thakur (31), fruit-seller Pawan Gupta
(25) and gym instructor Vinay Sharma (26) — the four men convicted of the brutal rape and murder of Nirbhaya — didn’t put up any resistance when they were being taken to the gallows.
Jail officials said the convicts did not show any sign of anxiety the night before their execution, though they all skipped breakfast on Friday morning.
As per prison rules, all the four convicts were marched to the scaffold with their hands pinioned behind their backs. A cotton cap with a flap was then put to their face just before they entered the enclosure with the gallows.
Vinay was reported to have cried before he was hanged until death along with the three others at
5.30 am on Friday in Asia’s largest prison which houses more than
16,000 inmates. The executions took place in the presence of the jail superintendent, district magistrate and a medical officer.
Director general of prisons, Tihar, Sandeep Goel, sent a one-word text message to the assembled media outside the prison at 5.35 am: “Hanged”.
All the four convicts were hanged together by Meerut-based hangman, Pawan Jallad.
The solemnity of the occasion was lost in the din as the crowd assembled outside the prison burst into celebration and started distributing sweets.
Hundreds of police personnel had been deployed to control the crowd that had assembled hours before the hangings to celebrate the execution.
While a group of people chanted “Death to rapists”, many waved placards and posters thanking the judiciary. The hangings, the first such mass death sentence carried out in Tihar and the first capital punishment carried out in India in five years, closed a painful chapter of the brutal rape and murder that had seared the country’s soul.
The crime, which took place in a private bus that moved through crowded areas of South Delhi on the night of December 16, had sparked widespread protests across the country, a massive global outrage and led to the toughening of laws against sex offenders in India.
The hanging of the four was carried out as per schedule, just two hours after a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court rejected the final plea by the convicts’ lawyer, A.P. Singh, to stay their execution in a late-night hearing. After losing the last legal battle, Singh had to face the wrath of some women activists in the premises of the apex court for raising a question over Nirbhaya’s character.
“Ask her (Nirbhaya’s) mother why she didn’t know where her daughter was till midnight, with whom and in what condition,” he said.
At her Dwarka residence, the victim’s mother said she hugged her daughter’s photograph and told her, “We finally got justice.”
Nirbhaya’s father Badrinath Singh said that his “faith in the judiciary has been restored”.
On December 21, 2012, eight days before she died, Nirbhaya had, in her dying declaration made in front of a magistrate, stated: “I want them (convicts) to be hanged so that no other criminal can do this kind of torture and ill-treatment to any other girl. In fact, such criminals should be burnt alive.”