Four of the men held guilty of raping and torturing a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012 will hang, the Supreme Court said on Friday, describing the crime as a "story of a different world". The court referred to the dying declaration of the young woman and said the "brutal and demonic" crime had been proved beyond doubt.
"If ever a case called for hanging, this was it," said the three judges, confirming the death penalty handed by two courts. "Gruesome", "gross", "sadistic" and "beastly" were some of the words used in the 429-page order.
Nirbhaya case: Convicts had appealed in Supreme Court against their death sentence
On December 16 2012, the physiotherapy student and her friend climbed onto a bus in south Delhi, assured by the driver that they would be dropped off at their destination. The woman was gang-raped by six men for hours, brutalised with an iron rod and her intestines were pulled out. She died in a Singapore hospital 13 days later, leaving millions in shock.
Nirbhaya case: There was outrage, street protests in India and also in other parts of the world
"The accused were obsessed about ravishing her life, she was treated as an object of enjoyment," said the judges, noting that the offence created a "tsunami of shock". The convicts, they said, also tried to run over the woman and her friend after dumping them on a road, naked and bleeding.
Amid outrage and street protests not just in India but also in other parts of the world, four of the rapists were sentenced to death by a trial court in 2013. A year later, the high court confirmed it. But Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh moved the Supreme Court for mercy.
"I am khush (happy)," said Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi. Her father BN Singh, who says he will never stop missing his daughter, added, "It's not just a victory for my family, it's a victory for each and every woman in our country."
The convicts still have the option of appealing twice against the Supreme Court ruling and also a presidential pardon.
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