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Journalism of Courage
Hours after four convicts in the December 16 gangrape case were hanged to death at Tihar Jail, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said “justice has prevailed”.
Taking to Twitter, Modi said, “It is of utmost importance to ensure the dignity and safety of women. Our Nari Shakti has excelled in every field. Together, we have to build a nation where the focus is on women empowerment, where there is emphasis on equality and opportunity.”
The four convicts of the 2012 Delhi gangrape-murder case were hanged at 5.30 am, bringing to a close a keenly watched case. The incident, which took place more than six years ago had shocked the country and the world, and brought about changes not only to India’s criminal laws against sexual offences but also women’s safety.
Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were hanged just before the crack of dawn at Tihar Jail in New Delhi after their petitions filed before a lower court, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court were rejected in late-night hearings. They were sentenced to death for the rape and brutal assault of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the national capital on December 16, 2012.
Apart from the four convicts, a juvenile was tried by the Juvenile Justice Board and served the maximum sentence of three years in a remand home. He was released in 2015. One of the accused, Ram Singh, was found dead in prison during the trial.
The convicts were executed by hangman Pawan Jallad, who was brought to Tihar from Meerut on March 17. He had earlier carried out a ‘dummy execution’ to test the ropes and other equipment.
Before the execution, regular health check-ups were done on the convicts. They had also been counselled for the last two weeks. CCTV cameras and jail guards kept a vigil on them to check their diet and prevent any case of misconduct. The convicts were kept in isolated cells and a last family meeting was arranged earlier this week.
A Delhi court set the date of execution for March 20 after the convicts exhausted all their legal remedies. The Supreme Court Wednesday quashed the last of their curative petitions.
On March 5, President Ram Nath Kovind rejected the mercy petition of the last convict — Pawan Gupta, following which a fresh date was assigned in line with the requirement of a gap of 14 days between the date of rejection of the mercy petition and the date of hanging.
The first death warrant was issued on January 7, two years and eight months after the Supreme Court confirmed the sentences. Thereafter, each convict filed separate petitions, typically moving just before the scheduled date of execution, and thereafter approaching the court to secure a postponement on grounds of pendency of the petition.
Multiple petitions have been filed and rejected during this period — the recent one on Thursday when the Supreme Court rejected the petition of Mukesh Singh who contended that he was not in Delhi on the day of the crime.
The last hanging in the country was that of Yakub Memom, who was convicted in the Bombay blasts case. Memon was executed in 2015. According to Project 39A of National Law University, Delhi, while trial courts handed out 102 death sentences in 2019, in the 27 cases heard in the apex court, 17 saw commutations and three acquittals while two were sent for a fresh trial.
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