New Delhi (Mckoy’s News) – Gang rape death sentences: the family of a 23-year-old Delhi student, gang raped and murdered in 2012 by four men in India is relieved as India’s Supreme Court on Friday, April 5 upheld the death sentences of the convicted for the brutal crime.
Ranjana Kumari Women’s Rights Activist called the court’s decision to uphold the death penalty a “historic message”.
“This is a historic message to all the people, the criminal mindset who wrong women, who inflict violence on women, to know that if you do something like this you will be also paying for it by the severest punishment that exists in our laws of the land,” she said on India’s NDTV.
Reports are that Physiotherapy student, Jyoti Singh, was raped and left dying by a gang of five men and a teenager after she boarded a private bus on her way home from the movies with a male friend.
Jyoti succumbed to the devastating internal injuries 13 days later, dying in the hospital; but not without a fight. She was determined to stay alive long enough to identify her attackers to the police. This lead to four men being convicted in September 2013 for murder, gang rape, theft, conspiracy and “unnatural acts.” Their trial lasted seven-months.
The suspected ring leader and fifth man was found dead in jail from an alleged suicide, and the 17-year-old was sentenced to three years in a detention centre. He has since now been released.
The brutal attack triggered any protest through out India, regarding the treatment of women.
At the 2013 sentencing of the four Judge Yogesh Khanna told the court that the case fell into the “rarest of rare category” which justifies the capital punishment in India.
on Friday, April 5 2017, Justice Dipak Misra sited that the 23-year-old woman had suffered a “devastating hour of darkness” as the court rejected the appeal against the death penalty, which was served in the 2013 sentencing.
According to media reports a round of applause and cheers went up in the courtroom as the judgement was read out in the Indian count on Friday to reject the 2012 gang rape death sentences appeal, putting an end to the appeal hearing that began in 2016.