Nirbhaya gets justice after 7 years and 3 months, all four convicts hanged in Tihar Jail

New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case were hanged at 5:30 today, seven years and three months after they brutalised a 23-year-old woman in a moving Delhi bus with a barbarity that shook the nation.

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. In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea.

Finally, the four convicts were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goel said.
After the execution, Nirbhaya's mother told reporters that justice has finally been done and women will definitely feel safer now.

"We will request the Supreme Court to issue guidelines so that no one can adopt delaying tactics in such cases in future," she said at her house.

"Our wait for justice was painful and agonising. We appeal for observing this day as Nirbhaya 'Nyay Diwas' (day of justice)," Nirbhaya's father said.

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31), held guilty for gangraping a physiotherapy intern in Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012 so savagely that she died of her injuries a fortnight later, were executed in Tihar Jail’s Cell No. 3.

All legal routes to escape the noose closed on Thursday for the four men. The Supreme Court refused to entertain Mukesh Singh's last ditch plea that he was not in the city when the crime took place. A bench of Justices of R Bhanumati, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna said he had exhausted all his remedies and no fresh evidence can be entertained.

The apex court also dismissed Akshay Kumar's plea challenging the rejection of his second mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind, saying no ground was made out for a judicial review of the decision.
On a parallel track, a Delhi court dismissed the pleas of Akshay Kumar, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma seeking stays on their execution.

Just a day before the scheduled execution, the top court one after the other dismissed three pleas filed by Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh and Akshay Singh including two petition that were filed today itself.

Their death warrants were deferred thrice by a court on grounds that they had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.

The manner in which the convicts used the judicial safeguards as loopholes faced criticism from all quarters of the society, with many calling for swifter laws against death-row convicts.

On Thursday evening, Tihar Jail also did its prep.

Seven years after the execution of Afzal Guru, it got ready for the hanging of the four men after several dummy runs and officials brushing up on details specified in the jail manual.

Nirbhaya Case: Our wait for justice was painful and agonising, says victim's father after hanging of convicts

This is the first time that four men were hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.

The execution of the four convicts brings the curtains down on the case that shook not just India but also the world with the details of its brutality.

The widespread protests subsequently paved the way for a change in India's rape laws.

After raping and brutalising the woman, the men, one of whom was a juvenile at the time, dumped her on the road and left 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. She died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.

Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.

While Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

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.