India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the final appeal of one of the four men sentenced to death for the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman on a bus in New Delhi, paving the way for the four to be hanged.
The case made international headlines and helped expose the scope of sexual violence against women in India, prompting lawmakers to stiffen penalties in rape cases.
The victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student whom Indian media called “Nirbhaya,” or “Fearless,” because Indian law prohibits rape victims from being identified, was heading home with a male friend from a movie theater when six men lured the couple onto a bus.
They beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict extensive internal injuries to her. The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.
Sexual assault cases in India often languish for years, but the assailants in this case were tried relatively quickly. Four defendants were sentenced to death. Another hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family insists he was killed. The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and was sentenced to three years in a reform home.
The last hanging in India was in 2013.
One of the defendants sentenced to death, Akshay Kumar Singh, filed his review petition earlier this month, after the other three had their petitions rejected.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected Mr. Singh’s appeal. His lawyer accused the judges of bowing to public pressure. India’s president can still decide to grant Mr. Singh mercy, but that is not expected to happen.
Outside court, the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, said she was happy with the ruling.
“This is one step closer to justice,” she told reporters.
Activists say new sentencing requirements haven’t deterred rape, the fourth-most common crime against women in India, according to government statistics.
The Supreme Court’s ruling comes amid a revived debate over sexual violence in India after several cases made national news in recent weeks.
A woman in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was doused with gasoline and set on fire by five men, including two she had accused of rape and who were out on bail, on her way to attend a court hearing in her case. She died earlier this month at a hospital in New Delhi.
In another case, the burned body of a 27-year-old veterinarian was found in late November near the city of Hyderabad in southern India. The police later fatally shot four men being held on suspicion of raping and killing the woman after investigators took them to the crime scene, drawing praise from people frustrated by the results of the 2012 case and condemnation from those who said the police had undermined the courts’ role.
Source : Nytimes
