New Delhi, March 20, 2020: Four convicts in the Nirbhaya murder case were hanged to death on March 20, more than seven years after the gangrape and tortured of a young medical student on a moving bus in Delhi.
Sandeep Goel, Director-General of Delhi’s Tihar jail, confirmed to reporters outside the prison that the four had been hanged at 5:30 a.m. A doctor examined and declared all four dead, he said.
A five-member panel of forensic department of a Deen Dayal Upadhyaya hospital, under the supervision of Doctor B N Mishra performed the postmortem at 8 a.m.
The pre-dawn execution took place less than two hours after the Supreme Court dismissed the final petition of the convicts.
In the hours before that, the convicts had also petitioned the Delhi High Court, where their lawyer cited coronavirus for the lack of proper documents for a hurriedly-filed appeal.
Akshay Thakur, 31, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, and Mukesh Singh, 32, had spent the last few hours in isolation in separate cells, barely eating, in Tihar Jail.
They hardly slept and refused a last meal or any last wish, said officials. One of them begged for his life as he was led to the gallows.
The entire jail was on lockdown since last night, and officials said, a few other prisoners in Asia’s largest prison facility could not sleep ahead of the first execution since 2015.
The convicts were woken at 3:30 am, around the time they learnt they had reached the end of the road in courts.
The four filed multiple petitions over the past few months, managing to stall their execution thrice at the eleventh hour. “Send them to the India-Pakistan border, send them to Doklam (at the border with China), but don’t hang them,” pleaded the lawyer of Akshay Thakur.
The victim’s mother Asha Devi, expressed happiness that her endless wait for justice has finally ended.
“We all have waited so long for this day. Today is a new dawn for daughters of India. The beasts have been hanged,” said the woman of the victim, who came to be known as “Nirbhaya” or fearless.
After the Supreme Court’s verdict, she went home and hugged her daughter’s photo.
On December 16, 2012, the 23-year-old woman had watched a movie with her friend and boarded a private bus to reach home. Six men on the bus beat the friend unconscious before attacking the woman.
For nearly an hour, the woman was subjected to a savage assault and tortured with an iron rod before being dumped for dead, naked, bleeding and her intestines spilling out. She survived long enough to identify her attackers but died a few days later in a Singapore hospital amid angry street protests across India and international revulsion.
The woman was studying physiotherapy and worked at a call center. Her father worked as an airport baggage handler. Her killers lived in a slum in south Delhi.
Of the six arrested, one, Ram Singh, was found dead in his jail cell and a minor who was just short of 18 was freed after three years in a reform home.
India changed its laws on crimes against women after the horrific gang-rape and killing. Earlier this year, the government also asked the Supreme Court to make it harder for convicts in such brutal crimes to use legal loopholes to stall their sentence.
Akshay’s family reached the mortuary as of 9:50 am, over an hour after the bodies reached. Vinay’s family reached the DDU Hospital an hour later. As a procedure, the postmortem is conducted only after the family members officially identify the body.
An official said that the convicts had not expressed any ‘last wish’ or will to authorities. Their belongings and money they earned during their stay in jail will be handed over to their respective family members, the official added.
Sources: ndtv.com,thehindu.com