Post date: Sep 10, 2013 12:25:35 PM
Four men are found guilty of the rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi and her murder, closing a chapter on a crime that triggered protests and soul-searching about the treatment of women in India.
NEW DELHI, INDIA (SEPTEMBER 10, 2013) (ANI) - Four men were found guilty on Tuesday (September 10) of the rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi and her murder, closing a chapter on a crime that triggered protests and soul-searching about the treatment of women in India.
Arguments on sentencing are due to begin on Wednesday said A. P. Singh, the defence lawyer for two of the convicts. They had all pleaded not guilty.Bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta, and unemployed Mukesh Singh were found guilty of luring the woman and a male friend onto the bus on the night of December 16 as the pair returned home from watching a movie at a shopping mall in south Delhi.
As the bus drove through the streets of the capital, the men repeatedly raped and tortured the 23-year-old with a metal bar before dumping her and her friend, naked and semi-conscious, on the road. She died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later of internal injuries.
"All the accused are convicted in all sections in which they were charged at the time of the order of charge and all sections have been clubbed for all the accused," said Singh to a crowd of reporters outside the Saket district court.
Defence lawyer V.K Anand, representing another of the convicted men, said that he would be challenging this order in the High Court.
"We don't have any complaint. We had a very fair trial, we had a wonderful judge. As far as the grievances are concerned we would challenge it in the High Court.
(Q: Would you challenge this decision in the High Court.")
"Yes, yes," said Anand.
A fifth defendant hanged himself in jail in March. Another, who was 17 a the time of the attack, was sentenced to three years at a juvenile detention centre last month.
The law prohibits naming the victim, a trainee physiotherapist who had worked in a call centre, but Indian media have dubbed her 'Nirbhaya', a Hindi word meaning fearless.
Her path through education onto the first rungs of middle-class life seemed to epitomize the aspirations of millions of young women in the world's second most populous nation.
The case resonated with thousands of urban Indians who took to the streets in fury after the attack.