Fast-track court convicts Delhi gang-rape perpetrators

Within nine months of the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman, a designated fast-track trial court here on Tuesday convicted four perpetrators of the gruesome crime. The court will hear arguments on the quantum of sentence on Wednesday.

Ram Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, Akshay Thakur and a juvenile brutalised the physiotherapy student in a moving bus here. Ram Singh committed suicide in the Tihar Jail on March 11. The juvenile has already been convicted and awarded three years’ imprisonment.

Additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna said, “All four accused have been convicted of various offences, including attempt to kill the complainant (victim’s friend), gang-rape, unnatural sex and killing.”

The judge announced the verdict immediately after a few mediapersons were allowed inside the courtroom after much fuss and chaos.

The judge said: “They have been found guilty of all charges and argument of quantum of sentence will take place tomorrow (Wednesday). They had abducted the victim to have illicit intercourse with her, so they are convicted under Section 366 of the IPC.”

The 237-page judgment said: “If the accused had participated in the incident, then the question as to who committed the rape or who could not complete the act of rape becomes irrelevant for the conviction of gang-rape. Hence, all accused are convicted under Section 376 (2)(G), gang-rape.”

The judge held that it was a premeditated act. “The nature of these acts suggest that none of them were impulsive. The act of inserting rods into the girl’s body and extracting her internal organs after committing the gang-rape can, in no manner, be seen as an act done only to facilitate the commission of gang-rape. Rather, this aspect makes the act of pulling out internal organs of the victim to kill her an intentional one. The act of moving the bus in a manner so that the victim comes under its wheels makes the acts of these accused as done with the intention of certainly resulting in her death,” the judgment stated.

The verdict also mentioned that the rods inserted into the woman’s body had inflicted 18 internal injuries to her organs. “They did this repeatedly and pulled out her internal organs even by their hands,” it said.

Of all the accused present in the courtroom, Pawan broke down. Mukesh’s parents, who came from Rajasthan, were also seen weeping.

Misty-eyed family members of the victim remained quiet throughout the proceedings. They talked to police officers, trying to understand the judgment in detail. “We hope they get death sentence tomorrow,” the victim’s brother told Deccan Herald before police escorted him out of the courtroom.

The six accused, on December 16, 2012, gang-raped the woman. She, along with a 28-year-old male friend, had boarded the bus for Dwarka. After the assault, they were deserted near the Mahipalpur flyover. The woman succumbed to her injuries on December 29 at a Singapore hospital.