NEW DELHI:
Four years later after a 23-year-old medical student on her way back home after watching a movie was beaten, gang-raped and her intestines pulled out, the Supreme Court of India will decide today if the four men involved in the crime and sentenced to death for the brutal crime should be spared the gallows. It was ruled by a trial court in 2013 that they should be hanged, and this sentence was confirmed by the high court, the next year. But the four accused namely – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh – had appealed against the given verdict to the Supreme Court.
There were two more people present and witnessed the incident in the bus on the cold winter night of 16 December 2012. Ram Singh, who was driving the bus that the young girl training to be a physiotherapist and her friend had boarded at Munirka in south Delhi. Ram Singh in 2013,  was found hanging in Tihar jail , months before they were convicted. Last August, Vinay Sharma had also attempted suicide.
The sixth convict was a minor, a 17 year old boy when he brutalised the girl, dubbed Nirbhaya. He was sent to a  out of a correction home and walked out in December 2015 after spending three years under the country’s juvenile law, sparking public outrage and an overhaul of the juvenile law. Now, a juvenile between the age of 16 and 18 years can be treated as an adult if a heinous crime is committed by them.
Friday’s ruling by the Supreme Court’s  three-judge bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra, Madan B Lokur and R Banumathi would be the last opportunity for the four accused to convince a court to spare them away from the death row. If the three judges – the verdict by them will be delivered separately  – agree to reject the plea of the mentioned accused , it would push the four closer to the gallows.
