Nirbhaya convicts hanged: Four Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case convicts hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, victim’s parents say justice finally done.

The four men convicted of the gang rape and murder of a Delhi woman on December 16, 2012, were hanged in the darkness of pre-dawn on Friday, ending a horrific chapter in India’s long history of sexual assault that had scared the nation’s soul.

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.

This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates. The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22.

They were hanged at 5.30 am, director-general of prison Sandeep Goel said.

Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were accused of the rape case. where one of the accused Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case and the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

he road to the gallows (faansi) was a long and circuitous one, going through the lower courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president’s office before going back to the Supreme Court that heard and rejected various curative petitions.
The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.
On March 5, a trial court issued fresh death warrants for March 20 at 5.30 am as the final date for the execution.

What happened on December 16

The woman, a paramedical student, was attacked while going home after watching a movie with her friend. She was repeatedly raped, tortured brutally and thrown off the bus along with her friend.

She died of her injuries on December 29, 2012, in a hospital in Singapore, where she was airlifted.

This is what happened that night:

• The woman and her friend reached Munirka Bus Stand at 9 pm in an auto-rickshaw after watching Life of Pi at a movie theatre in south Delhi’s Saket

• They could not find any public transport to return home from there. So, they boarded a private bus

• The victim and her friend saw four men in the driver’s cabin and two sitting behind the cabin—one on the left and another on the right side

• They sat next to each other on the left side on the second seat in the bus and paid a fare of Rs 20

• As the bus reached the flyover near the airport, three of them came out of the cabin. Two of them started abusing the woman’s friend and asked him where he was taking her late in the evening

• One of them hit the victim’s friend who tried fighting back. Soon, two others joined in beating him with iron rods lying in the bus

• As the victim came forward to save her friend, two of the assailants pushed her to the back seat

• The victim’s friend was caught and beaten and the other assailants took their turn to rape her

• In their brutal act, the convicts damaged her internal organs using an iron rod

• The assailants also robbed both the victims

• They then tried to throw both the victims out of the moving bus from its rear door but it did not open. They then brought them in the front and pushed them out of the moving bus on National Highway 8 near Mahipalpur flyover

• Both of them were later spotted by the passersby who informed the police

• The passersby also brought sheets to cover them. They were then rushed to Safdarjung Hospital.