Justice finally delivered, but fight for speedy justice for others to go on: Family
God sees the truth, but waits”, the famous story by Leo Tolstoy, was exactly the same in the modern context, the way Nirbhaya’s battered soul and her grieving parents waited for the 7 long years to see the rapists and killers being hanged. Justice was finally delivered when hangman Pawan pulled the lever of all the four death-row convicts one after another at 5.30 am on Friday morning and thus putting an end to the most talked about gangrape and subsequent murder of a 23-year-old paramedic girl in the independent India.
Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am in Tihar Jail.
Cheers went up after the hanging with some waving the national flag and shouting slogans of “Long Live Nirbhaya” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”. The crowd even distributed sweets amid chanting “Nirbhaya has got justice, the other daughters still await”.
The brutality of the crime on a winter night more than seven years ago had shaken the nation. After the execution of the convicts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said justice has prevailed. “It was of the utmost importance to ensure the dignity and safety of women,” the PM said.
While talking to the media at her home after a sleepless night that also saw the Supreme Court holding an extraordinary hearing that continued till 3.30 am, Asha Devi, mother of Nirbhaya said they finally got justice but their fight will continue for India’s daughters.
Nirbhaya was raped and brutalised by six men, including a juvenile at the time, in an empty bus that was driven through the streets of the national Capital on December 16, 2012. They then dumped her on the road and left her for dead on the cold winter night. Her friend who was with her was also severely beaten and thrown out along with her.
She was so severely violated that her insides were spilling out when she was taken to hospital and died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.
Of the six, Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began, and the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.
On Friday morning since 4 am, hundreds of people started to gather in front of Tihar prison. In view on execution the authorities has also increased its security in and around the jail premises.
As the clock ticked for the execution of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case and the Tihar Prison authorities geared up for the process, none of the convict showed any resistance while being taken up to gallows on Friday morning.
According to Tihar prison authorities, the convicts also did not show any signs of anxiety on the night before their execution and skipped breakfast on Friday. Vinay and Mukesh had dinner but none of the four had breakfast or a bath before they were led to the gallows.
“The meal comprised roti, dal, rice and sabzi. Akshay had tea in the evening but did not have dinner. The four convicts showed no signs of anxiety in the evening. Minutes before the execution, Mukesh had said he would like to donate his organs while Vinay wanted his paintings, done during his years in jail, to be given to the jail superintendent and his ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ to his family,” he said.
“The bodies were kept hanging for half an hour, a mandatory procedure after execution in accordance with the prison manual. The bodies were taken to the DDU Hospital for post-mortem and later were handed over to family,” said the official.
This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22. In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging. A Supreme Court bench dismissed Pawan’s last plea in a late-night hearing that began at 2.30 am and lasted an hour.
It also refused to pass any direction allowing Pawan and Akshay to meet their family members just before they are sent to the gallows. Outside Tihar Jail, hundreds of people gathered despite the unearthly hour and the coronavirus scare to await news of the execution. Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani welcomed the news. “I have seen Nirbhaya’s mother’s struggle over the years, though it took time to get justice but it has been done finally. It is also a message to people that you can run away from law but cannot finally avoid it.
Pramod Singh Kushwaha, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Special Cell, who was during Nirbhaya gangrape and murder in 2012, the additional DCP (South) and headed the investigation team, said the hanging is a tribute to the departed soul and this will also act as a deterrent to other rapists.
Taking a counter view, human rights group Amnesty International said death penalty is never the solution towards ending violence against women and called the execution a “dark stain” on India’s human rights record. Recalling the days when Nirbhaya was treated in Safdarjanj Hospital in 2012, the doctors remembered her as a brave woman and said with the hanging of the four convicts’ law had taken its course. The road to the gallows was a long and circuitous one, going through the lower courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president’s office before going back to the Supreme Court that heard and rejected various curative petitions. The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.
On March 5, a trial court issued fresh death warrants for March 20 at 5.30 am as the final date for the execution.