All four death row convicts in 2012, Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case were executed at 5:30 am today. A few hours earlier, the Supreme Court had dismissed their final petition in a hearing past midnight, bringing the curtains down on a 7-year-old case that had left the nation in shock. In a bid to stave off the final fate, the convicts had petitioned the Delhi High Court, where their lawyer cited coronavirus, among other things, for lack of proper documents and hurriedly filed an appeal.
A trial court had already declared that they had run out of all legal options of stopping their execution. Being hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi on Friday morning, the four convicts named Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh spent a few hours in separate cells in isolation. This was the first time in the history of India that four convicts were hanged simultaneously.
Ahead of the execution, Asha Devi, Nirbhaya’s mother, who had been fighting tooth and nail for justice, said, ‘We all have waited so long for this day. Today’s dawn will be new dawn as my daughter will get justice. It will also be a new dawn for daughters of India.’
Read EquityPandit’s Nifty Outlook for the Week