Seven years after Nirbhaya died, a Delhi court has issued a death warrant against four convicts. The order was pronounced by Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora. The four convicts sentenced to death in the Nirbhaya case will hang at 7 am on January 22.
Akshay Thakur Singh, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma were found guilty in the 2012 gang-rape, torture and killing of a young paramedic student in Delhi. Last month, the Supreme Court dismissed the last review petition in the case, filed by Akshay Singh. Nirbhaya’s parents then asked a lower court to issue a death warrant but the judge had deferred a decision until today.
Besides the four convicts, two more were accused in the rape and murder. Ram Singh, the fifth accused, committed suicide and a juvenile was released after three years in a reform home.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped and tortured with an iron rod on a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16, 2012, before being dumped on a road, naked and bleeding. She died on December 29 amid street protests across the country.
The convicts are currently in Delhi’s Tihar jail. AP Singh, lawyer for the convicts, has said that they will file a curative petition in the Supreme Court.