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Nirbhaya Case Four Indian Men Executed For 2012 Delhi Bus Rape and Murder - BBC News

Four men convicted of the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi, known as the Nirbhaya case, were executed in March 2020, marking India's first executions since 2015. The case sparked nationwide protests and led to the introduction of stricter anti-rape laws in India. Despite these changes, statistics indicate that violence against women remains a significant issue in the country.

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Nirbhaya Case Four Indian Men Executed For 2012 Delhi Bus Rape and Murder - BBC News

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Home UK World Business Polit

Nirbhaya case: Four

Indian men executed
for 2012 Delhi bus
rape and murder

02:50

The rape case that galvanised India

20 March 2020

Four Indian men convicted of the gang rape and

murder of a student in Delhi in 2012 have been
hanged.

Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and

Mukesh Singh were sentenced to death by a trial
court in 2013.

The four were hanged in the capital's high-

security Tihar prison in the ﬁrst executions in
India since 2015.

The victim died from her injuries days aer

being raped by six men on a moving bus. The
incident caused outrage and led to new anti-
rape laws in India.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy student was

dubbed Nirbhaya - the fearless one - by the
press as she could not be named under Indian
law.

Six people were arrested for the attack. One of

them, Ram Singh, was found dead in jail in
March 2013, having apparently taken his own
life.

Another, who was 17 at the time of the attack,

was released in 2015 aer serving three years in
a reform facility - the maximum term possible
for a juvenile in India.

Will hangings make women safer?

Delhi gang rape: Second chance for

teenage rapist?

Was Delhi gang rape India's #Metoo

moment?

Who were the Delhi gang rape convicts?

In the last few months, all four convicts ﬁled

petitions in the Supreme Court in a bid to reduce
their sentences to life imprisonment. But the top
court rejected their petitions, leaving the men
with no other legal recourse. A last-minute
appeal to have the death penalties commuted
was also rejected hours before the executions.

Minutes aer the convicts were hanged on

Friday morning, the victim's mother said, "I
hugged my daughter's photograph and told her
we ﬁnally got justice."

DELHI POLICE

The four men had pleaded not guilty

Her father said that his "faith in the judiciary had

been restored".

Security was tight outside the prison with a

large number of police and paramilitary
personnel deployed to maintain law and order.

A group of people carrying placards had

gathered outside the prison gates and began
celebrating aer the executions were
announced.

Some chanted "death to rapists" and waved

posters thanking the judiciary.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted on

Friday morning saying "justice has prevailed". He
added that the country had to "build a nation
where the focus is on women's empowerment".

Despite the fact that this case made rape and

sexual violence against women a focus, there
has been no sign that crimes against women are
abating.

Recently-released ﬁgures from the National

Crime Records Bureau show police registered
33,977 cases of rape in 2018 - that's an average
of 93 cases a day.

What happened to Nirbhaya?

The student boarded an oﬀ-duty bus at around
20:30 local time on 16 December 2012 with a
male friend. They were returning home aer
watching a ﬁlm at an upscale mall.

The six men, who were already on board,

attacked the couple, taking turns to rape the
woman, before brutally assaulting her with an
iron rod. Her friend was beaten.

GETTY IMAGES

Police checking the bus in which the student was

raped

They were then thrown out onto the roadside to

die. Some passers-by found them naked and
bloodied and called the police.

Two weeks later - aer widespread protests that

demanded India to reckon with its treatment of
women - the victim died in a hospital in
Singapore, where she was taken for further
treatment aer her condition deteriorated in a
Delhi hospital.

Has India become safer for

women?
Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi

A short answer to that question would be: No.

And that's because despite the increased

scrutiny of crimes against women since
December 2012, similar violent incidents have
continued to make headlines in India.

And statistics tell only a part of the story -

campaigners say thousands of rapes and cases
of sexual assault are not even reported to the
police.

I personally know women who have never

reported being assaulted because they are
ashamed, or because of the stigma associated
with sexual crimes, or because they are afraid
that they will not be believed.

Some say strict punishment, swily delivered,

will instil a fear of the law in the public mind and
deter rape, but experts say the only permanent
solution to the problem is to dismantle the hold
of patriarchal thinking, the mindset that regards
women as being a man's property.

Until that happens, how do women and girls in

India ensure their safety?

Read the full piece here

How did India react to the

crime?
"Wake up India, she's dead," screamed one
newspaper headline, announcing her death.

The horriﬁc crime triggered a ﬁrestorm of

protests in India, in ways that had not really
been seen before.

The capital came to a standstill as protesters

occupied the main streets. Authorities even
temporarily closed some Metro stations in a bid
to stop people from gathering.

Thousands of furious protesters - mostly young

women and men - still turned up at India Gate in
the centre of the city, prompting police to use
water cannons to disperse the crowds.

GETTY IMAGES

There were widespread protests in India

Protests continued in Delhi and several other

cities for a fortnight, the number of days it took
the victim to succumb to her injuries.

The Delhi government tried to halt rising public

anger by announcing a series of measures
intended to make the city safer for women: more
police night patrols, checks on bus drivers and
their assistants, and the banning of buses with
dark windows or curtains.

The attack became an inﬂection point,

galvanising a national debate on the treatment
of women.

Public outrage over the crime mounted again in

2015 when the BBC broadcast a documentary
called India's Daughter which included an
interview with one of the convicts who blamed
the victim for what happened to her.