The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the petitions of the four convicts who challenged their death penalty in the 2012 Delhi gang rape case, also known as the Nirbhaya case. The apex court upheld the death sentence to the four surviving accused, earlier awarded by a trial court, "taking [into account] the serious injuries, the severe nature of offence committed by the convicts".
The victim's parents had for long hoped that the apex court would uphold the death sentence awarded to the four surviving convicts — Mukesh (27), Pawan (20), Vinay (21) and Akshay (29) — in the case. The fifth accused, Ram Singh, hanged himself while in prison, and another person, who was a juvenile when he was arrested for the crime, was convicted last year and would have served a maximum sentence of three years in a reform home.
Earlier, a trial court had sentenced all four to death, the most severe punishment that is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases. The Nirbhaya case, which created a furore across the nation and globally, led to months of activism for women's rights and a redrafting of legislations related to rape and sexual violence.
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