16 December rapists will ‘hang till death’

The victim, a paramedical student, was brutally assaulted inside a moving bus in south Delhi last December. She later succumbed to her injuries in a Singapore hospital.

Additional sessions judge (ASJ) Yogesh Khanna held that the ghastly act of the convicts came under the bracket of rarest of rare cases. ‘I may leave here while saying that the gravity of the incident depicts the hair rising, beastly and unparalleled behaviour. The subjecting of the prosecutrix to inhuman acts of torture before her death had not only shocked the collective conscience but calls for the withdrawal of the protective arm of the community around the convicts. The ghastly act of the convicts definitely fits this case in the bracket of rarest of rare cases,’ said the judge.

The convicts were given death for the offence of murder, while they were awarded life imprisonment for the offence of gangrape. ‘The convicts are sentenced to death for offence punishable under section 302 of Indian Penal Code. Accordingly, the convicts be hanged by neck till they are dead,’ said ASJ Khanna in his order.

The court also said these are times when gruesome crimes against women have become rampant and courts cannot turn a blind eye to the need to send a strong deterrent message to the perpetrators of such crimes. 

‘The increasing trend of crimes against women can be arrested only once the society realize that there will be no tolerance from any form of deviance against women and more so in extreme cases of brutality such as the present one and hence the criminal justice system must instill confidence in the minds of people especially the women. The crime of such nature against a helpless women, per se, require exemplary punishment’, said the court.

The court had earlier this week convicted all these accused, including Ram Singh who was found dead in Tihar jail. There were six accused in the case in which one turned out be a juvenile. The Juvenile Justice Board had convicted and given him the maximum punishment of three years in a probation home under the Juvenile Justice Act.