[Indian authorities promised swift justice in the case, and four men were convicted and sentenced to death in 2013. A fifth assailant died in prison, and the sixth was a juvenile offender who served a short sentence. The woman’s family has waited ever since to see the men punished. India’s Supreme Court twice upheld the death penalty in the case.]
By Joanna Slater
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Asha
Devi, center, mother of the victim of the fatal 2012 gang rape on a moving bus, leaves
the Supreme Court in
New Delhi in December 2019. (Manish Swarup/AP) |
NEW
DELHI — Four men convicted
in an infamous 2012 gang rape and murder in Delhi will be executed by hanging
on Jan. 22, a court said Tuesday.
The execution would be the first since 2015
in India, where capital punishment is rare, and comes amid a nationwide furor
over how to tackle pervasive violence against women.
The four men were convicted of brutally
raping a 23-year-old woman after she and a male friend boarded a private bus on
their way home from seeing a movie. The assailants dumped her bleeding body on
a road, and she clung to life for two more weeks before dying in a hospital of
massive internal injuries.
The woman is known here as “Nirbhaya,” or
“fearless one,” because Indian courts prohibit the disclosure of the names of
sexual assault victims. Her death was a turning point, sparking huge protests
that resulted in significant changes to the law with the aim of reducing sexual
violence.
Indian authorities promised swift justice in
the case, and four men were convicted and sentenced to death in 2013. A fifth
assailant died in prison, and the sixth was a juvenile offender who served a
short sentence. The woman’s family has waited ever since to see the men
punished. India’s Supreme Court twice upheld the death penalty in the case.
In India, it’s not easy to report on rape
Asha Devi, the victim’s mother, thanked the
court after it issued the death warrants Tuesday, saying the step was late but
welcome. “My daughter will get justice,” she said. “This hanging will restore
the faith of the country’s women.”
Badrinath Singh, the father of the young
woman, said in an interview with The Washington Post that he was “extremely
happy” with the court’s decision, and it would have a deterrent effect. “One
thing is sure, when these four men are hanged at the same place, it will create
fear in such beasts,” he told reporters.
Lawyers for the convicted men can file a last
appeal for clemency with India’s president, but experts think that such a
petition would fail.
Even as India has instituted harsher
sentences for rape, the country has watched with horror as gruesome,
headline-grabbing crimes against women and girls have continued. Last month, a
young veterinarian was raped and killed in Hyderabad in circumstances that
recalled the Nirbhaya case.
Four suspects were arrested and allegedly
confessed to the crime, according to police documents. But just days later,
they were fatally shot while in police custody. Some in India celebrated their
deaths as fitting punishment, while others decried the shootings as a clear-cut
case of extrajudicial killing.
The scheduled executions in the Nirbhaya case
would mark a watershed. The last execution in a rape and murder case was in
2004. Since then, authorities have carried out only three other death
sentences, all in terrorism cases. The last one was in 2015.
Anup Surendranath, an expert on the death
penalty at the National Law University in Delhi, said the court violated the
law by issuing a death warrant in the Nirbhaya case before the men had made a
final plea for mercy. “This impatience with procedural protections is cause for
serious concern,” he said.
Overall, “India has struck the right
balance,” said K.T.S. Tulsi, a senior lawyer practicing at the country’s
Supreme Court. “This was the rarest of rare cases where the conduct of these
accused was so inhuman [that the] . . . death penalty is the right decision.”
About 33,000 rapes were reported in India in
2017, according to the most recent national crime statistics (about 100,000
rapes were reported in the United States in 2017). Advocates say that India’s
official figures understate the scope of the problem, since the vast majority
of victims never approach the authorities.
Tania Dutta contributed to this report.
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