Four rapists and murderers finally executed

Four Indian men have been hanged after being convicted of the gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi in 2012.

The four perpetrators, namely, Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh, sentenced to death by a trial court in 2013, were hanged on Friday morning, in the capital’s high-security Tihar prison.

After the convicts were executed, the victim’s mother said, “I hugged my daughter’s photograph and told her we finally got justice.”

Her father said that his “faith in the judiciary had been restored”.

As a reminder, Nirbhaya, a fictitious name was a student of 23 years. On 16 December 2012, on the night of the tragedy, she boarded an off-duty bus with a male friend. They were returning home after watching a film at an upscale mall.

Six men, who were already on board, attacked the couple, taking turns to rape the woman, before brutally assaulting her with an iron rod, while her friend was beaten.

Afterward, the two victims were then thrown out onto the roadside naked and bloodied in a deplorable state. Some passers-by found them and called the police.

The six people were arrested for the attack. One of them, Ram Singh, was found dead in jail in March 2013, having apparently taken his own life.

While, another, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was released in 2015 after serving three years in a reform facility – the maximum term possible for a juvenile in India and the rest were finally executed after their petitions were rejected.