16 Dec gang rape case: High Court to hear trial court reference today

The Delhi High Court will hear on Monday the trial court’s reference for confirmation of the death penalty awarded by it to four men in the 16 December gang rape-cum-murder case.

The matter will be heard by a bench headed by Justice Reva Khetrapa.

On 13 September while awarding capital punishment to Mukesh (26), Akshay Thakur (28), Pawan Gupta (19) and Vinay Sharma (20), additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna had referred the case to the high court for confirmation of the sentence.

The trial court has to refer each death penalty case to the high court for confirmation of the punishment.

The four convicts were awarded death sentence in the brutal gang rape case by the sessions court which said it fell in the rarest of rare category as the crime was committed against a 23-year-old girl in a ‘beastly’ and ‘hair-raising’ manner.

‘Accordingly, the convicts be hanged by neck till they are dead,’ the trial court had said after noting that the inhuman and ghastly acts of the convicts shocked the collective conscience of the nation and deserves exemplary punishment.

Key accused Ram Singh (34) was found dead in the cell in Thar Jail here in March and proceedings against him were abated. The juvenile accused was on August 31 convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home.

On the night of 16 December, 2012, the paramedic student was gang-raped in a moving bus in south Delhi after the convicts luring her and her 28-year-old male friend, who was also assaulted, on board the vehicle, which was later found to be plying illegally on the national capital’s roads.

The victim’s friend, a software engineer, suffered fractures in his limbs. The girl succumbed to her injuries on 29 December, 2012, in a Singapore hospital.