Delhi (Rana Ali Zohaib) Nirbhaya case: Four convicts-Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar (31), and Mukesh Kumar (32) of Nirbhaya the gang rape case were hanged on Friday at 5:30 am at Tihar Jail in Delhi.
A three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court consisting of Justice R Banumathi, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice AS Bopanna, heard the last hearing today at 2:30 am. This last-ditch effort of hearing before SC bench failed to stay there hanging.
The Director-General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goyal said that doctors had examined all four convicts and declared them dead. All their belongings and money they earned during their time in jail will be handed over to their families.
Several people gathered outside the Tihar jail today, holding the national flag and shouting slogans like-“long live Nirbhaya” and People, including women rights activist Yogita Bhayana celebrated and distributed sweets after the hanging.
Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi said, “Justice delayed, but not denied, we will continue our fight for justice for India’s daughters”.
Nirbhaya’s father Badrinath Singh said, “Today is our victory and it happened because of media, society and Delhi police. You can understand what is inside my heart by my smile”.
Before the execution, Tihar jail was completely locked down. Paramilitary forces were deployed outside the jail to subdue the crowd. Security was beefed up outside Tihar Jail Number 3.
How Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh were executed:
At 4:00 am, the convicts were asked to take a shower but they refused.
At 4:15 am, the convicts were given time to do prayer, but they refused. All four convicts also did not do breakfast.
“Vinay and Mukesh had their dinner properly on time. The meal comprised roti, dal, rice, and sabzi. Akshay had tea in the evening but did not have dinner. All the four convicts did not have breakfast,” Tihar jail official said.
At 4:30 am, a medical checkup of four convicts was held to check whether they were fit to bear the hanging. A jail superintendent also checked for any notice or letters which could halt the hanging. However, no such documents were received.
At 5:20 am, the faces of the convicts were covered with a cotton cloth and their hands were tied behind their backs. They were taken to “Phansi Kothi” or the execution chamber of Tihar prison. During this period, other inmates were not allowed to leave their cells.
At 5.25 am, a district magistrate present at “Phansi Kothi” asked the final wishes of the four convicts. The convicts were also offered if they wanted any religious leader present during their execution, they declined.
Att 5:40 am, the four convicts were hanged to death. Tihar jail Director-General Sandeep Goel confirmed that all four of them were hanged. This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail
At 6:00 am, a medical examiner declared that all four were dead. The bodies were then lowered.
At 7:00 am, bodies of 2012 Delhi gangrape case convicts brought to Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) hospital for postmortem. Postmortem started at 08:00 and completed by 12:30 pm
The four men were convicted in 2013, but three of them appealed their death sentence to India’s top court, the Supreme Court. All appeals were denied, including mercy pleas to India’s President Ram Nath Kovind.
What happened to Nirbhaya ;
At about 8:30 p.m. on December 16, 2012, Nirbhaya and her boyfriend took a chartered bus home after watching the film “Life of Pi” at a Delhi movie theater. It’s common in India for chartered buses to pick up additional passengers during odd hours.
While the bus was moving, a group of men stole the pair’s belongings, then took the victim to the back of the bus where they raped and assaulted Nirbhaya with iron rods, according to court documents. They also stripped and beat her boyfriend, who they held down during the attack.
Afterward, the men threw the naked victims from the front door of the moving bus and tried to run them over. They then cleaned the bus with the victims’ clothes, before burning them and dividing the “loot” among themselves, including two mobile phones, a wristwatch, and a pair of shoes.
Nirbhaya died two weeks after the attack in a Singapore hospital, where doctors had been treating her for serious injuries to her body and brain. Before she died, she made statements to the authorities about the attack.
The men involved;
Soon after the attack, police located six suspects, who knew each other before the incident.
The oldest was 34-year-old school bus driver Ram Singh, who “routinely” drove the vehicle where the attack took place.
He was accused of the victim’s rape and murder but was never convicted as he allegedly killed himself in prison shortly after the trial began. His family claimed that he was murdered.
The youngest, who was only 17 at the time of the attack and who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to three years in a juvenile correctional facility and was released in 2015.
The other four, aged between 28 and 19 at the time of the attack, were convicted and sentenced to death less than a year later.
They include bus cleaner Akshay Thakur, part-time gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, and Ram Singh’s younger brother Mukesh Singh.
