The "brazenness and coldness" with which the men convicted in the Nirbhaya gang-rape picked up the young woman from a public space in the evening hours to carry out their vicious crime reflects the "threat" to which society is posed to in case the convicts are not appropriately punished, the Supreme Court said, while observing that if at all there is a case warranting award of death sentence it is the Nirbhaya gang-rape case.
Justice R. Banumathi in a separate but concurring judgement observed that "respect for women is on the decline" and to ensure that "gender justice does not remain only on paper".
The gruesome offences were committed with "highest viciousness" and human lust was allowed to take such a "demonic form", said Justice Banumathi.
Calling it a "rarest of rare" case, the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the death sentence on all four convicts -- Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, in the Nirbhaya gang-rape case of 2012 that led to her death and caused nationwide outrage.
In a majority judgement Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Ashok Bhushan said the "aggravating circumstances" against convicts far outweighed the mitigating circumstances, such as their poor family background, age, good conduct in prison and their children -- cited in their favour.
"If the dreadfulness displayed by the accused in committing the gang-rape, unnatural sex, insertion of iron rod in the private parts of the victim does not fall in the 'rarest of rare category', then one may wonder what else would fall in that category," said the lady judge.
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She opined that when the crime is brutal, shocking the collective conscience of the community, sympathy in any form would be misplaced and it would shake the confidence of public in the administration of the criminal justice system.
Justice Banumathi said that we live in a civilized society where law and order is supreme and the citizens enjoy inviolable fundamental human rights but when the incident of gang-rape surfaces, it causes "ripples" in the conscience of society and serious doubts are raised as to whether we really live in a civilized society and whether both men and women feel the same sense of liberty and freedom which they should have felt in the ordinary course of a civilized society, driven by rule of law.
"Certainly, whenever such grave violations of human dignity come to fore, an unknown sense of insecurity and helplessness grabs the entire society, women in particular, and the only succour people look for, is the state to take command of the situation and remedy it effectively."
She also said that despite the progress made by women in education and in various fields and changes brought in ideas of women's rights, "respect for women is on the decline" and "crimes against women are on the increase".
Justice Banumathi also opined that offences against women are not a women's issue alone but a human rights issue. Increased rate of crime against women is an area of concern for the law makers, she said while suggesting an emergent need to study in depth the root of the problem and remedy through a strict law and order regime.
She said it is important to ensure that "gender justice does not remain only on paper".
We have a responsibility to set good values and guidance for posterity, Justice Banumathi said and quoted a line of Swami Vivekananda, who had said: "The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women."
She said that crime against women not only affects women's self esteem and dignity but also degrades the pace of societal development. "I hope that this gruesome incident in the capital and death of this young woman will be an eye-opener for a mass movement "to end violence against women" and bring about "respect for women and her dignity" and sensitize public at large on gender justice.
Crimes like the one before us cannot be looked with "magnanimity", she said. "I do not find any justification to convert the death sentence imposed by the courts below to a life imprisonment for the rest of the life," she held.
The four were convicted for raping and assaulting a 23-year-old paramedical student inside a moving bus on December 16, 2012 which led to her death 13 days later in a Singapore hospital.
The rapists, six in all including a juvenile, enticed the woman to board the bus alongwith her boyfriend to go home after seeing a movie. They raped her by turns on the moving bus and assaulted her.
--IANS
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