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NEW DELHI (AFP) - The judge hearing the case of four men convicted for a shocking gang rape on a bus in New Delhi last December sentenced them to death on Friday.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said the case fell into the "rarest of rare category", which justified capital punishment.
One of the men, Vinay Sharma, broke down in tears as the sentence was announced.
Delhi gang-rape case: Four sentenced to death by hanging
India's legal system allows for execution only in 'the rarest of the rare cases', when the prosecution has proved 'the collective conscience was shocked'
ANDREW BUNCOMBE DELHI FRIDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2013
A court in India today sent four men convicted of the Delhi gang-rape to be hanged, declaring that the notorious crime that shocked the country was among the “rarest of rare”.
“These are the times when gruesome crimes against women have become rampant,” said the judge, Yogesh Khanna, as he announced his decision. “Society needs to be shown that there will be no tolerance.”
He added: “The crimes come under the category of rarest of rare and therefore I sentence them to death.”
The four men - bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh, who was unemployed – had faced either the death penalty or life imprisonment after they were found guilty of more than a dozen charges.
There was a small cheer outside the courtroom as the verdict was announced. Inside, Sharma reportedly broke down in tears.
The family of the 23-year-old physiotherapy student were escorted from the courtroom by police. The father, who looked stony-faced, later said: ‘This is the verdict we were waiting for. I can’t express my happiness when the judge said they would be hanged. I feel my daughter has now got justice.”
VK Anand, the lawyer for Mukesh Singh, said he would be appealing against both the verdict and the sentence. He claimed the court had wrongfully interpreted the evidence.
“He has been very fair with the court. He has admitted he was driving the bus,” said the lawyer.
Earlier this week, the prosecution had argued that the court should only award the death penalty.
“The court should give the maximum sentence otherwise the message will go to society that deviance of this nature will be tolerated,” said the chief prosecutor, Dayan Krishnan. “The test is ‘was the collective conscience shocked?'. There can be no better example than this case.”
During the seven-month trial, held in a specially established fast-track court and from which the media was prohibited from attending large parts of, prosecutors said the men had lured the woman and a male friend onto an off-duty bus on the night of 16 December as the pair returned home from watching a movie.
As the men drove the bus through the streets of Delhi, they repeatedly raped and assaulted the 23-year-old with a metal bar before stripping her and her friend naked and throwing them from the vehicle. The bus was usually driven by Ram Singh, another of those originally charged but who was found hanging in his cell earlier this year.
The young woman’s friend, Awindra Pandey, who had been badly beaten, recovered from his injuries and was able to help the police. But the physiotherapy student died two week later in a hospital in Singapore where she had been sent for specialist emergency treatment.
Earlier this week, lawyers for the convicted men, who all pleaded not guilty, argued for leniency when it came to sentencing. Yet India’s home minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, made an unlikely political intervention, telling reporters that the death penalty was “assured” in the case.
In his 237-page judgement, the judge found the men guilty of at least 11 counts under the Indian penal code. These ranged from gang-rape and murder to conspiracy and dacoity.
He said the men had all “inflicted numerous injuries on the body of the [victim] including biting her on all parts of her body and inserting iron rods into her...This showed they had the intention to kill her.”
India’s legal system allows for execution in what the Supreme Court calls “the rarest of the rare cases”. What defines those cases remains debated but the only executions in recent years have been of convicted terrorists.
The last non-terror related offender to be executed in India was Dhananjoy Chatterjee, a school janitor who was convicted of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Kolkata and hanged in August 2004.
An Indian court has sentenced four men to death for the gang rape and murder of a student in the capital, Delhi.
Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta were convicted on Tuesday of the December attack of the 23-year-old woman, a crime that unleashed a wave of public anger over the treatment of women in India.
I am very happy our girl has got justice
Father of the victim
The woman died two weeks after the attack of internal injuries. which led to violent protests across India and new laws against rape.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said on Friday the case fell in the "rarest of rare category and warrants the exemplary punishment of death", rejecting pleas for lighter sentence.
"In these times, when crime against women is on the rise, the courts cannot turn a blind eye toward such gruesome crimes,'' Khanna said in announcing the sentence.
He said the attack "shocked the collective conscience'' of India.
The four men faced either life imprisonment or death by hanging.
'We did our job'
One of the convicted men, 20-year-old Vinay Sharma, broke down in tears as the sentence was announced.
As the news broke, crowds inside the building and outside the courtroom roared with cheers and applauded the judgement.
The prosecution team congratulated each other, with lead lawyer Dayan Krishnan saying: "We did our job. We are happy with this sentence".
Like all death sentences, Khanna's order must be confirmed by India's High Court. The men can appeal their case to the High Court, as well as to the Supreme Court, and ask the president for clemency.
The victim's family, along with numerous politicians and government officials, had long called for the men to be executed.
The father of the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said the family was also satisfied.
"I am very happy our girl has got justice," he told reporters inside court flanked by his wife and sons.
Earlier, protesters outside the court had demanded that the four men must be hanged.
The case has been closely followed across India, seen as a reflection on rampant mistreatment of women and the government's inability to deal with crime.
