After a nine-month-long trial, a special court in Delhi, awarded death sentence today, to all the four convicts in the December 16 Delhi gang-rape case.
Gym instructor Vinay Sharma, bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, fruit-seller Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh, who were found guilty in all 13 charges, including murder and rape, were given death sentence.
Besides gang rape and murder, the court had 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 in order to murder, while acquitting them of the charge of murder in dacoity.
Out of the six men arrested in the case, one Ram Singh committed suicide inside Tihar Jail. Another accused, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was sent to a reform home for three years by a juvenile court.
While pronouncing the verdict, Additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna have said, even 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 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 girl in a bus after luring her and her 28-year-old male friend, who was also assaulted, on board the vehicle, which was later found to be plying illegally on Delhi roads.
The victims 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 Times of India