Supreme Court Stays Death Penalty of 2 Delhi Gang-rape convicts

The Indian Republic, 15 March, New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Saturday, stayed the death penalty of the two convicts of the December 16, 2012 gang-rape till March 31. The convicts had moved the Apex Court on Saturday, challenging the verdict of the Delhi High Court that had upheld their death sentences.

The duo who are accused, Mukesh and Pawan Gupta, have maintained that they had been “denied fair trial under the garb of day-to-day trial and (under) torture they were compelled to accept the prosecution story which is not only concocted but also contrary to the facts”.

The High Court of Delhi had on Thursday upheld the death sentences awarded to four convicts in the gang rape, saying that their acts, which wer “barbaric” was “not worthy of human condonation” and that the society could not be a spectator to “such depraved behaviour”.

The division bench, consisting of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani had also dismissed appeals of all the four convicts – Mukesh, 26; Akshay Thakur, 28; Pawan Gupta, 19; and Vinay Sharma, 20 which challenged the September 13, 2013 trial court verdict that had sentenced them to death.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, known as Nirbhaya, had been the victim of a violent gang-rape, being brutally sexually assaulted by six men, including a juvenile, in a moving bus. The accused had then thrown and her male companion out of the vehicle, after stripping them of their clothing, leaving them to die by the roadside on the cold night in December 2012.

The woman had then died of grave intestinal injuries on December 29 2012 at the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth, to where she had been airlifted for specialised treatment.

One of the six accused had been discovered dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in New Delhi. The juvenile who had been involved in the crime had been sentenced by the Juvenile Justice Board, on August 31, 2013 to a reform home for three years, the maximum term for juveniles under the law.