JOIN USThe 23-year-old victim of the December 16 rape-cum-murder wanted the six perpetrators to be hanged or burnt to death, as per her dying declaration.
“I want them to be hanged so that no other criminal can do this kind of torture and ill-treatment to any other girl. In fact, such criminals should be burnt alive,” she had told a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, who recorded her statement at Safdarjung Hospital on December 23. Just 10 months after the gruesome crime that outraged the entire nation, a city court pronounced the verdict on Tuesday stating that the “accused are guilty of the brutal crime”.
She scribbled two lines on a piece of paper from her hospital bed where she also wrote the names of the five accused.
“Kuch logon ko aate dekha….aur rod se ladai ki aur lohe (I saw some people coming and they beat us with an iron rod and iron)”.
She was apprehensive about boarding the bus as she felt that something was wrong with the vehicle but before she could change her mind, the conductor has closed the door and they were handed over the tickets. “I suspected something but the conductor of the bus had already taken Rs 20 as fare and the bus had started moving by then. So we sat in the in the second row of the bus,” she said.
She said then one of the assailant came towards her male friend and abused him before beating him up. When he resisted, rest of them came and started beating them up. She also said whenever she tried to save her friend, they assaulted him with more vengeance.
“They took me at the back of the bus, tore my clothes and took turns to rape me. They also assaulted me with an iron rod and bit me everywhere. They inserted the rod inside my body and the six people took turns to rape for nearly an hour. I was semi-conscious during half period of torture,” she said.
“They thought we were dead and decided to throw us from the moving vehicle,” she added.
The victim, who died after a 13-day struggle in a Singapore hospital on December 29, in her statement before the Metropolitan Magistrate on December 25 said when she boarded the bus with two of the accused — Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma —who had pretended to be passengers.
“When my male friend asked how fast they will reach Dwarka, the conductor (Ram Singh) replied, ‘very fast’. The two accused also asked the similar question and got the same reply. We assumed that they were also passengers,” she said.
“They said the girl is dead. Throw her. We were both without clothes on the street. A passerby then called police,” she added.
The victim’s parents and younger brother, who were in the courtroom on Tuesday, wished that their daughter’s cries do not go unheard and her last demand “of getting accused hanged” be fulfilled. “We are waiting to see what punishment they are going to get. We all want they get hanged,” the victim’s brother told Deccan Herald in the courtroom.