Supreme Court confirms the death sentence for Delhi rapists

The last chance for the four men is to appeal to the clemency of the Indian president. The case of the ferocious group rape of 2012 shone the spotlight on the issue of widespread violence against women. In India the mentality that treats women - and even girls – as an object of men's desire or possession is imbedded.


New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Indian Supreme Court has confirmed the death sentence for the four men who in December 2012 gang raped a young physiotherapy student while she was in the company of her boyfriend on a bus in the capital of Delhi. Yesterday, the judges established that there are no legal requirements to revise the sentence of the same court issued in May 2017, against which three of the defendants had appealed.

The four had appealed against the ruling previously issued by the Delhi High Court and, even earlier in 2013, by the district court. They are: Mukesh, 29, Pawan Gupta, 22, Vinay Sharma, 23, and Akshay Kumar Singh, 31, who did not ask for the revision. A fifth defendant who was a minor at the time of the crime served a three-year sentence; the sixth, Ram Singh, took his life in 2013 in Tijar prison. Now the last hope for the four defendants is to appeal to the grace of the president of the Union.

The case of the fierce rape of Nirbhaya - this her name, which was only later reported - has provoked deep indignation and turned the spotlight on the issue of violence against women in India. The 23-year-old girl died after two weeks of agony in a Singapore hospital.

Upon reading the sentence, Asha Devi, the victim's mother, said: " “People of our country have got justice. We hope the process is completed soon and the rapists get death, and society is safer for women ".

Even though the violent rape of the Indian student contributed to increasing the attention on the issue of gender crimes, a mentality is still rooted in the country that relegates women - and even girls – to being a mere object of male desire or possession. One example is another case that became famous this year: that of Asifa Bano, the eight-year-old girl kidnapped, tortured and raped to death in Jammu and Kashmir to punish her father, a Muslim cleric.