Supreme Court on 5th May upheld the death sentence awarded by High Court to all four convicts in the brutal Nirbhaya gang-rape that led to her death and caused nationwide outrage
Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, May 9: Girl students in Delhi have hailed the Supreme Court verdict upholding death sentence to four convicts of Nirbhaya gang-rape case and majority of them have also demanded that the culprits should be hanged publicly in order to deter potential criminals from such heinous acts.
IndiaTomorrow.net talked to some college girls in Delhi and found that all of them were little disappointed with the delay in judgment but welcomed the death sentence given by SC in the 2012 case.
“I am happy as well as little bit disappointed as this verdict should have come early. A lesson was must to teach such culprits. People think that life imprisonment should be given rather than death sentence. But if life imprisonment is given to the culprits, they think that if they do such a heinous crime they would not get death penalty and will be safe. They need to have this in their mind that they can get death sentence for doing such a heinous crime,” an MBA student said.
“They should be hanged publically, that will give a strong message. You can’t just think about culprit’s life. You also have to think about victim’s life,” she averred.
The Supreme Court on 5th May upheld the death sentence awarded by the Delhi High Court to all four convicts in the brutal Nirbhaya gang-rape that led to her death and caused nationwide outrage. All the four were convicted for raping and assaulting the 23 year-old paramedical student inside a moving bus on December 16, 2012 which led to her death 13 days later.
The Delhi High Court on March 13, 2014 upheld death sentence to all four convicts awarded by the trial court earlier. Both Supreme Court and Delhi High Court agreed with the trial court that this was “rarest of rare” cases.
There were total six accused in the case. The fifth accused, Ram Singh (33) allegedly committed suicide on 11th March 2013 in Tihar Central Jail and the sixth who was a juvenile at the time of crime, was released in November 2015 after completing his probation period in a remand home. The execution had been stayed after the four convicts — Mukesh (27), Pawan (20), Vinay (21) and Akshay (29) – moved the Supreme Court challenging the HC verdict.
Many girls see this remarkable judgment as an example being set.
A law student said: “Supreme Court’s judgment definitely has set an example. It sounds very extreme, but being a law student, I am an advocate of capital punishment. I think these culprits should be hanged in public place.”
Welcoming the verdict of SC, an MBA student said that since Nirbhaya case got good attention from public and media so justice could be delivered in time, and same attention should be given in other such cases so the culprits can be brought to justice.
“It is big time that this judgment came out. Many come out saying it (death sentence) is inhumane and brutal. But what happened with that girl for whom nobody was available to support? Who would speak for her,” she asked.
‘If possible, rapists should get more stringent punishment than death’
“This case got attention at large level, it is good. If it is possible there should be more stringent punishment and not less than the death penalty. All such cases should get such media attention so the culprits are brought to justice. Media reaction and public agony collectively play a huge role in speeding up the case. If the public were not so reactive, maybe this judgment could have got delayed even more,” she said.
Another law student said: “We are happy that victim’s family will get some kind of closure but I don’t think that justice is very proper because I am against capital punishment. You can’t justify taking someone’s life by providing justice for another death. But somehow we are ok as something is better than nothing.”
