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Four men were on Tuesday found guilty by a Delhi court of gang-raping and murdering a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus here in December last year, a case that evoked nationwide outrage and led the government to bring in stringent anti-rape laws.
The court would hear arguments on the quantum of the sentence on Wednesday.
Besides gang rape and murder, the court held Mukesh (26), Vinay Sharma (20), Pawan Gupta (19) and Akshay Singh Thakur (28) guilty of attempt to murder, unnatural offences, dacoity, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, kidnapping or abducting to murder, while acquitting them of the charge of murder in dacoity.
Additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna, presiding the special fast-track court, also convicted them for kidnapping or abducting with intent to secretly and wrongfully confining a person, abducting to subject a person to grievous hurt and slavery, abducting woman to cause her defilement, voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery and dishonestly receiving property stolen in the commission of a dacoity of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
As soon as the verdict was delivered, Pawan broke down while Vinay was in a state of shock. Mukesh was heard saying they would have to face the consequences for what they have done. The fourth convict, Akshay, seemed unaffected.
The judge said: “All the accused have been convicted for various offences, including attempt to kill the complainant (victim’s male friend), for gang rape with the victim and also for unnatural sex with her and killing the victim. The accused have also tried to destroy the evidence after the incident, so they are convicted under section 201 of the IPC. They had abducted the victim to have illicit intercourse with her, so they are convicted under section 366 of the IPC.”
The murder charge, for which the four men have been convicted, entails a maximum of death penalty and life term as the minimum punishment.
While pronouncing the verdict, the judge said though the proceedings against accused Ram Singh (34), who was found dead in his prison cell after he committed suicide on March 11, were abated, “he is also convicted under the same sections (gang rape, murder and other offences)”.
On the night of December 16, last year, Ram Singh, Vinay, Akshay, Pawan, Mukesh and the juvenile had gang-raped the paramedical student in a bus after luring her and her 28-year-old male friend, also assaulted, on board the vehicle, later found plying illegally on Delhi roads. The victim’s friend, a software engineer, had fractured his limbs in the incident. The girl succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at a Singapore hospital.
The court relied on the dying declaration of the victim, forensic evidence, including finger prints, dental models, DNA samples and other medical reports of the convicts, electronic evidence and the statements given by them to the police after their arrests.
The judge also said the presence of the convicts in the bus in which the crime was committed had been established through the location of their mobile networks.
After pronouncing the judgment, the girl’s family members, present in the court, said, “The day they (convicts) will be awarded death penalty, justice will said to be done.”
Defence lawyer A P Singh alleged the verdict has been delivered under pressure and the four men will now be punished for the offences which they have not committed. Advocate V K Anand, who appeared for Mukesh, said he will appeal against this conviction in the superior courts as he was only driving the bus.
Mukesh’s mother was seen crying in the court while the other family members refused to speak.
Monday’s decision comes 10 days after the juvenile accomplice in the case was sentenced to three-year term at a detention centre after being held guilty by the Juvenile Justice Board of gang-rape and murder of the paramedic and robbing a carpenter before the incident. The trial in the robbery case against the four is on in another court.
