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(Pi Bureau)
New Delhi : The Supreme Court today upheld the death penalty for the four convicts for the 2012 gang-rape and murder of Nirbhaya.
“The Nirbhaya rape-cum-murder case is rarest of rare case and we are compelled to give extreme punishment to ensure justice,” said the apex court, while delivering the order.
Nearly five years after a 23-year-old medical student on her way home from a movie was gang-raped and tortured on a moving bus in Delhi.
Earlier A trial court had ruled in 2013 that they should be hanged and the high court confirmed the sentence. But the four – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh – challenged it in the Supreme Court.
“The brutal, barbaric, and demonaical conduct of the convicts shook the conscience of humanity and they don’t deserve leniency,” the top court said.
As soon as the apex court read out its order, the fully packed court began to applaud the decision.
On December 16 2012, the young medical student with her boyfriend was returning on her way home from a movie boarded a bus in south Delhi, assured by the driver that they would be dropped off at their destination. The two were then attacked and the woman was gang-raped by six men, brutalized with an iron rod and her intestines were pulled out. She died in a Singapore hospital 13 days later.
Hearing the SC order , father of the medical student said “ “These men should be hanged. There is no crime more barbaric than this….I’m certain about that,”
Nirbhaya’s father said something similar this morning.
“Leave the Supreme Court, even God will not forgive such people. They will be awarded death sentence,” said Nirbhaya’s father. “Only the death penalty (will do) for culprits now, it should not be denied,” Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi had said ahead of the hearing.
One of the convict Ram Singh, the bus driver , committed suicide and was found hanging in Tihar jail in March 2013, while one other was declared minor/ juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted in August last year and will serve the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home. One convict Vinay Sharma also tried to commit suicide last Augustbut was saved some how.
Today’s apex court appeal was heard by a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra and comprised Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.
It was expected that the Supreme Court would not grant relief to the accused as Justice Dipak Misra doesn’t hesitate to give a death sentence and is exceedingly sensitive to women’s rights and liberties.
