Nirbhaya case: Four convicts hanged after long-delayed quest for justice

The four men
convicted in the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in
Delhi in December 2012 were executed by hanging at Tihar Jail at 5:30am on
Friday.

The victim
was attacked by the group when she and a friend boarded a bus the assailants
were driving. She was abandoned by the gang with horrifying injuries and surrendered
in hospital two weeks later.

The crime,
which became known as the Nirbhaya case in memory of the honorific given to the
victim, shocked the country, triggering mass protests and leading to demands
for changes in prosecution of rape cases.

The four
convicts—Mukesh Singh (33), Pawan Gupta (26), Vinay Sharma (27) and Akshay
Kumar Singh (35)—had been convicted of gang-rape and murder in September 2013
and sentenced to death. Another accused, who was a minor at the time of the
crime, was placed in a juvenile home and released in late 2015.

The fifth
suspect, Ram Singh, who was Mukesh Singh’s brother and believed to be the
mastermind of the crime, was found hanging in jail in May 2013, before he could
be convicted. Ram Singh was 35 years old at the time of his death.

The hangings
bring to an end the long-delayed quest for justice in the Nirbhaya case. The
Supreme Court had confirmed the death sentences for the accused in May 2017,
but progress in the appeals process was slow, with the convicts filing curative
pleas and mercy petitions individually since November last year.

A Delhi
sessions court issued death warrants in the Nirbhaya case three times
previously, but the hangings of the four convicts were deferred three times
since January.