DHAKA: Four men have been found guilty by a Delhi court of raping and murdering a 23-year-old medical student on a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012. The quantum of sentence will be pronounced Wednesday, the four men could face the death sentence.
A fifth man committed suicide in jail in March and the sixth attacker, who was 17 at the time of the assault, was sentenced on August 31 to three years in a reform centre, the maximum punishment for a juvenile found guilty of rape and murder.
The parents of the student have said nothing less than the death sentence will be justice enough. They had wept after the juvenile verdict, terming it grossly inadequate.
The savage attack shook India to its core, ignited street protests, and forced the introduction of tougher laws to punish sexual offences. Thousands marched for days demanding better safety for women and swift justice for the student.
The young student had been so badly violated with an iron rod that she died of her injuries two weeks after the attack in a hospital in Singapore, where she was airlifted by a government which apologised for having failed her.
Before that, while she was fighting for her life in hospital in Delhi, she gave a lengthy statement to the police which served as key evidence in the trial. DNA tests and the testimony of her boyfriend who was with her on the bus and was assaulted by the gang were also used to establish the guilt of the defendants, prosecutors had said.
The police says that when the student and her friend were leaving the mall on a Sunday night after watching a film, the bus with the six men pulled up and promised to drop them home. The men were allegedly drunk and had decided hours earlier to find a woman they could rape that night, prosecutors argued in court.
The police says the student`s friend was assaulted with an iron rod and thrown to the back of the bus before the men took turns to rape the physiotherapy intern. The couple was then thrown naked and bleeding onto the road, and the gang tried to run them over, but the girl`s friend pushed her out of the way, the police has claimed.
Her case led the government to clear new laws which make stalking, voyeurism and sexual harassment a crime, and provide for the death penalty for repeat offenders or for rape attacks that lead to the victim`s death.
Source: NDTV
BDST: 1318 HRS, SEP 10 ,2013
RS/BSK
