 "Four given death in rape case that riveted India")
Four men convicted of a brutal gangrape and murder were sentenced on Friday to die by hanging, a decision met with satisfaction from the victim's parents and triumphant cheers from the crowd outside the courthouse, where some held up makeshift nooses and pictures of hanging bodies.
The four men - a fruit vendor, a bus attendant, a gym handyman and an unemployed man - were found guilty on Tuesday of raping a young woman on a moving bus last December, penetrating her with a metal rod and inflicting grave internal injuries, then dumping her on the roadside.
The country was riveted by the story of the woman, who died of her injuries two weeks later, and tens of thousands of people flooded the streets to demand tougher policing and prosecution of sex crimes.
But until the last minute it was unclear whether this would lead to death sentences in a country where liberal and populist impulses have strained against one another for decades, reserving the death sentences for "the rarest of rare cases." News of the decision was met with a wave of jubilation on the street outside.
"This is the beginning of freedom for Indian women today," said Ramandeep Kaur, 38, a cosmetologist. "Today, we are free because these men are going to be killed."
It is far from clear, however, that the four men will be executed in the near future - or at all. The order must be confirmed by a high court, and the condemned may appeal the ruling to the high court, Supreme Court and the President, a process that can drag on for years.
Though there are 477 people on death row in India, only three have been executed in the last nine years.
Sadashiv Gupta, a defence lawyer for one of the men, Pawan Gupta, said he had reassured his client that the ruling would very likely be commuted to life imprisonment.
"I met my client and I told him, 'You are going to get the death penalty, take it in stride and don't panic,'" Gupta said. "I think he will not be hanged."
But judge Yogesh Khanna clearly rejected those arguments, saying this crime embodied "the rarest of the rare," and invoked the possibility of a larger wave of violence against women.
"In these times when crimes against women are on the rise, the court cannot turn a blind eye to this gruesome act," he said, according to reporters in the courtroom.
At this, one of the defendants, Vinay Sharma, broke down in tears and cried loudly.
A P Singh, who defended two of the men, called the decision "completely unfair" and said it had been made under intense political pressure at a moment when Indian leaders are looking ahead to parliamentary elections next spring.
"I will contest this case until the last moments of my life," he said.
Defence arguments were drowned out by cries for execution - including from the victim herself, who before her death told a court official that her attackers "should be burnt alive." Protesters have congregated regularly outside the courthouse, chanting "Hang the rapists," and on Friday they turned their wrath on the defence lawyers, forcing one to rush from the crowd.
Rosy John, 62, a housewife watching the furore outside the courtroom this week, said her only objection to the death sentence was that it was too humane a punishment.
"After death, they will get freedom," she said. "They should be tortured and given shocks their whole life. They have made so many people suffer, including their own families."
Polls show Indians remain ambivalent about using the death penalty, with 40 per cent of respondents saying it should be abolished, according to a survey by CNN-IBN and The Hindu. Among the vocal opponents of using it in this case were a number of women's rights groups.
Writer Nilanjana S Roy warned that executions would circumvent the more difficult question of why Indian girls and women are so vulnerable to sexual violence, most often at the hands of people they know.
"A base but very human part of me would like them to suffer as much as they made that woman suffer," she wrote in an opinion article in The Hindu, going on to envision the result if convicted rapists were hanged consistently for a year: 10,000 neighbours, shopkeepers, tutors, grandfathers, fathers and brothers.
"I wish I could believe that this sort of mass public execution - if we agreed that this was the way forward - would do more than slake our collective need for vengeance," Roy wrote. "But I don't believe in fairy tales."
Though there were six men on the bus when the woman was attacked, two were not sentenced on Friday. One defendant, Ram Singh, who was driving the bus at times during the assault, hanged himself with his bedsheet in his prison cell in March. A second defendant, who has not been named because he is a juvenile, was sentenced last month to three years in a detention centre - the heaviest sentence possible in India's juvenile justice system.
Four of the assailants had grown up in Ravidas camp, a warren of narrow lanes and makeshift houses on a roadside in South Delhi. Neighbours in the camp turned furiously on the defendants during the initial uproar over the rape, saying they had brought shame and dishonour to the community, and, nine months later, some are still livid.
"Only if they get strict punishment will men in the country change," said Amravati Singh, 35, saying she hoped the defendants never saw Ravidas, or their families, again. But others said their feelings had mellowed during the nine months that have elapsed. Leelavati, 40, said she had known the men since they were children, and they were not as bad as they appeared in the press.
"The punishment should be for the crimes they committed," she said. "They should not all be beaten with one stick to satisfy the public."
© 2013 The New York Times News Service
The four men - a fruit vendor, a bus attendant, a gym handyman and an unemployed man - were found guilty on Tuesday of raping a young woman on a moving bus last December, penetrating her with a metal rod and inflicting grave internal injuries, then dumping her on the roadside.
The country was riveted by the story of the woman, who died of her injuries two weeks later, and tens of thousands of people flooded the streets to demand tougher policing and prosecution of sex crimes.
But until the last minute it was unclear whether this would lead to death sentences in a country where liberal and populist impulses have strained against one another for decades, reserving the death sentences for "the rarest of rare cases." News of the decision was met with a wave of jubilation on the street outside.
"This is the beginning of freedom for Indian women today," said Ramandeep Kaur, 38, a cosmetologist. "Today, we are free because these men are going to be killed."
It is far from clear, however, that the four men will be executed in the near future - or at all. The order must be confirmed by a high court, and the condemned may appeal the ruling to the high court, Supreme Court and the President, a process that can drag on for years.
Though there are 477 people on death row in India, only three have been executed in the last nine years.
Sadashiv Gupta, a defence lawyer for one of the men, Pawan Gupta, said he had reassured his client that the ruling would very likely be commuted to life imprisonment.
"I met my client and I told him, 'You are going to get the death penalty, take it in stride and don't panic,'" Gupta said. "I think he will not be hanged."
But judge Yogesh Khanna clearly rejected those arguments, saying this crime embodied "the rarest of the rare," and invoked the possibility of a larger wave of violence against women.
"In these times when crimes against women are on the rise, the court cannot turn a blind eye to this gruesome act," he said, according to reporters in the courtroom.
At this, one of the defendants, Vinay Sharma, broke down in tears and cried loudly.
A P Singh, who defended two of the men, called the decision "completely unfair" and said it had been made under intense political pressure at a moment when Indian leaders are looking ahead to parliamentary elections next spring.
"I will contest this case until the last moments of my life," he said.
Defence arguments were drowned out by cries for execution - including from the victim herself, who before her death told a court official that her attackers "should be burnt alive." Protesters have congregated regularly outside the courthouse, chanting "Hang the rapists," and on Friday they turned their wrath on the defence lawyers, forcing one to rush from the crowd.
Rosy John, 62, a housewife watching the furore outside the courtroom this week, said her only objection to the death sentence was that it was too humane a punishment.
"After death, they will get freedom," she said. "They should be tortured and given shocks their whole life. They have made so many people suffer, including their own families."
Polls show Indians remain ambivalent about using the death penalty, with 40 per cent of respondents saying it should be abolished, according to a survey by CNN-IBN and The Hindu. Among the vocal opponents of using it in this case were a number of women's rights groups.
Writer Nilanjana S Roy warned that executions would circumvent the more difficult question of why Indian girls and women are so vulnerable to sexual violence, most often at the hands of people they know.
"A base but very human part of me would like them to suffer as much as they made that woman suffer," she wrote in an opinion article in The Hindu, going on to envision the result if convicted rapists were hanged consistently for a year: 10,000 neighbours, shopkeepers, tutors, grandfathers, fathers and brothers.
"I wish I could believe that this sort of mass public execution - if we agreed that this was the way forward - would do more than slake our collective need for vengeance," Roy wrote. "But I don't believe in fairy tales."
Though there were six men on the bus when the woman was attacked, two were not sentenced on Friday. One defendant, Ram Singh, who was driving the bus at times during the assault, hanged himself with his bedsheet in his prison cell in March. A second defendant, who has not been named because he is a juvenile, was sentenced last month to three years in a detention centre - the heaviest sentence possible in India's juvenile justice system.
Four of the assailants had grown up in Ravidas camp, a warren of narrow lanes and makeshift houses on a roadside in South Delhi. Neighbours in the camp turned furiously on the defendants during the initial uproar over the rape, saying they had brought shame and dishonour to the community, and, nine months later, some are still livid.
"Only if they get strict punishment will men in the country change," said Amravati Singh, 35, saying she hoped the defendants never saw Ravidas, or their families, again. But others said their feelings had mellowed during the nine months that have elapsed. Leelavati, 40, said she had known the men since they were children, and they were not as bad as they appeared in the press.
"The punishment should be for the crimes they committed," she said. "They should not all be beaten with one stick to satisfy the public."
© 2013 The New York Times News Service