Delhi gang-rape case: Death penalty for all the four accused
The prosecutors had demanded death penalty for four men convicted of raping and murdering a young intern on Dec 16, 2012.
NEW DELHI: Nine months after the horrific gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in
Delhi triggered nationwide outrage, a special court on Friday sentenced to death four convicts in the case.
Additional sessions judge
Yogesh Khanna announced the punishment in a packed courtroom at around 2.30 pm.
The sentence has to be confirmed by Delhi high court.
Holding
that the crime committed on a moving bus was in the "rarest of rare
category", the court noted that the girl and her male friend were
brutally assaulted, her abdomen ripped apart with an iron rod and
internal organs pulled out.
They were thrown out of the bus
moving at a high speed and the accused tried to run the vehicle over
them. She was left on the road half-naked, seriously injured, severely
bleeding and shivering in the winter chill.
The judge had convicted
Mukesh Singh, 26, Vinay Sharma, 20,
Pawan Gupta,
19, and Akshay Thakur, 28, on September 10, holding that there was
strong evidence they had committed the brutal gang-rape and a
"cold-blooded murder".
On
Wednesday, prosecutors had demanded death penalty for four men
convicted of raping and murdering the young intern, saying it was
important to send a signal to the country that such crimes would not be
tolerated.
"The common man will lose faith in the judiciary if
the harshest punishment is not given," special public prosecutor Dayan
Krishnan told trial judge Yogesh Khanna.
Inside the court,
lawyers for the four men pleaded for mercy and repeatedly highlighted
the reluctance of Indian judges in the past to impose the death
sentence.
Judges should not be bloodthirsty, said lawyer Vivek Sharma, who represents 19-year-old Gupta, the youngest of the four on trial. "You can't give capital punishment on demand."
Sharma
said his client had not taken part in the rape or torture of the woman.
He asked the court to take into account that Gupta was the sole
breadwinner for his family and had to take care of his elderly parents
and brother and sister.
A.P. Singh, lawyer for Kumar Singh
and Sharma, said the death penalty was a "primitive and cold blooded
and simplistic response to complex issues". He painted his clients as
downtrodden who deserved a second chance.
Mukesh Singh, who said
he had been driving the bus at the time of the attack, should not face
the same penalty as his co-accused, his lawyer V.K. Anand told the
court.
"At best, he can be held for aiding the others. Punish him, but punish him keeping in mind he was only driving the bus."
On
Tuesday, the fast- track court found Mukesh (26), Vinay Sharma (20),
Pawan Gupta (19) and Akshay Thakur (28) guilty of murder, gang rape,
unnatural sex, criminal conspiracy, dacoity, destruction of evidence,
kidnapping and attempting to murder the victim's male friend, the sole
eyewitness.
Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna delivered the
237- page judgement, noting that that the crime was committed in an
extremely brutal manner. "The major part of her intestine was pulled out
from the body," the judge said.
The fifth convict Ram Singh
committed suicide in Tihar Jail in March this year. The sixth convict
was a juvenile at the time of the incident and has been given a three-
year term in a reformation home.
The court trashed the alibis offered by the accused, describing them as inconsistent and contradictory in nature.
On
Mukesh's plea that he was only driving the bus and had not participated
in the gang rape, the court said in a case of gang rape and murder the
liability of all the accused is equal. The court also derived the
intention of the accused to kill the victims from the fact that after
the crime, they were thrown into the bushes in a naked condition on a
winter night so that their presence could not be easily noticed by
passers-by.
"They first attempted to throw them out of the moving
bus from its back door but since it was jammed, they dragged both the
victims in an injured, unconscious and naked condition by pulling their
hair to the front door of the bus and presuming them to be dead, threw
them out on a chilly night, that too at a very dangerous place, the main
Jaipur highway," the court said.
A unique modus operandi was adopted by the accused, the Delhi court said on Tuesday while holding them guilty of 13 offences.
"The accused adopted a unique modus operandi to do the acts," Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna said in his judgment.
"They,
besides causing external bodily injuries, inserted the rods in the
abdomen of the victim. They did this act repeatedly and pulled out
internal organs even by their hands," the court noted.
The judge
also observed: "The important aspect of this trial is the manner in
which both rods and hands were used for damaging the alimentary canal
and pulling it out from the body (of the girl). This act of complete
destruction of the most vital parts of the body can never be termed as
intending to cause bodily injuries and rather it will be an act done
with intention of causing death."
The court noted that the
accused were acting in a premeditated manner and deceived the victims
into boarding the bus thinking it is going towards their destination.
"After her body became devoid of any resistance, iron rods and hands were inserted into the abdominal cavity, the court noted.
The
court further said the gang rape victim did not die of medical
negligence. Justice Khanna rejected the defence's argument that the girl
did not die of injuries inflicted on her by the accused and instead
succumbed due to medical negligence and delay in rushing her to the
hospital.
Who are the four accused
MUKESH SINGH
Mukesh,
26, is the younger brother of Ram Singh, another rape accused who died
under mysterious circumstances inside Tihar Jail. Mukesh worked as a
cleaner on the bus. According to the police, Mukesh was driving when the
student and her friend were lured into the bus. Mukesh is accused of
raping and beating the student and her friend with an iron rod.
VINAY SHARMA
A
20-year-old gym assistant and fitness trainer, Vinay is the only one
among the accused who has completed his school education and can
communicate in English. Vinay had denied that he was involved in the
rape and claimed that he was attending a music concert along with co-
accused Pawan Gupta.
AKSHAY THAKUR
A 28-year-old
school dropout, he was arrested from his native village in Bihar. Thakur
worked as a helper on the bus and tried to destroy all evidence of the
incident by meticulously cleaning the bus. He moved to Delhi from Bihar
in 2011 and is reportedly married and has a son.
PAWAN GUPTA
A
19-year-old fruit seller, he had refuted all charges and had claimed he
was attending a music concert along with Vinay at the time of the
crime. His father appeared as a witness and claimed his son was
innocent. While he is said to have admitted to his crime at the
beginning of the trial, his lawyer has denied he made any statement.
What happened on the night of December 16, 2012
Police
said the 23-year-old physiotherapy student and her friend were lured
into the bus, both were beaten and then the woman was taken to the rear
of the bus and raped. They were then thrown, bleeding, on to a dark
roadside. The woman died in a Singapore hospital nearly two weeks later
where she was airlifted for specialised treatment.
According to
the chargesheet, the juvenile had subjected the 23-year-old
physiotherapist to sexual abuse twice, including once when she was
unconscious. He extracted her intestine with his bare hands and
suggested she be thrown off the moving vehicle devoid of her clothes, it
says.
"Of all the persons in the bus, two had engaged in the
most barbarism - Ram Singh, the main accused in the case, and the
juvenile," said an officer.
"Both of them had subjected her to
sexual abuse twice. Singh was the first to rape her followed by the
juvenile and then Akshay. Later, when she lost consciousness, Singh and
the juvenile raped her a second time."
The juvenile used his 'sing-song' whistle to lure the couple aboard the bus.
As
the bus drove through the streets of the capital, the men repeatedly
raped and tortured the 23-year-old with a metal bar before dumping her
and her friend, naked and semi-conscious, on the road, prosecutors said.
Her friend later recovered, but the woman's internal injuries were so
severe that she died in a Singapore hospital two weeks after the attack.
(With inputs from agencies)
