ITANAGAR, Jan 9: The Arunachal Pradesh Women’s Welfare Society (APWWS) has welcomed the death warrants issued to the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case, terming it a “landmark decision.”
A Delhi court on Tuesday issued death warrants against all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case and ordered that they be hanged on 22 January at 7 am in Tihar jail, over seven years after the brutal crime sparked outrage and anger across the country.
The death warrant, also known as a ‘black warrant’, addressed to the office of the Tihar jail chief, was issued by Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora against Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31), all of whom are on death row.
Ram Singh, one of the six accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
The APWWS in a statement lauded the courage shown by Nirbhaya’s mother, Asha Devi, who spearheaded the fight for justice in the long legal battle. The 23-year-old paramedic student, Nirbhaya, was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of 16 and 17 December, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on 29 December, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
