Four convicts of 2012 Nirbhaya case executed in Tihar jail

19:01 March 20

Convicts' bodies handed over to families for last rites

Bodies of the four Nirbhaya gang rape and murder convicts were handed over to their respective families for last rites on Friday after the post-mortem was conducted at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital here, jail officials said. 

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed Friday at 5.30 am for the savage assault in a moving bus on a 23-year-old paramedical student who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.

Jail officials said the bodies were kept hanging for half an hour, a mandatory procedure after execution as per the prison manual.

"After the doctor examined the bodies and declared all four dead, they were sent to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for the post-mortem. Later, their bodies were handed over to their families," Director General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goel said.

According to a senior jail official, Akshay's body will be taken to his village at Aurangabad in Bihar. 

"The family members of Mukesh will take his body to Rajasthan. The bodies of Vinay and Pawan will be shifted to their houses at Ravidas Camp in south Delhi," they said.  Earlier, their family members rushed to DDU hospital for the necessary paper work before conducting the post-mortem. 

There were elaborate security arrangements at the hospital, especially near the mortuary. No person, except the hospital staff and the relatives of convicts, was allowed near the mortuary.

03:59 March 20

New Delhi:The four men convicted of the gang rape and murder of a Delhi woman on December 16, 2012 were hanged in the darkness of pre-dawn on Friday, ending a horrific chapter in India's long history of sexual assault that had seared the nation's soul.

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.

This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates. The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22. 

They were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Prison Sandeep Goel said.

After raping and brutalising the woman, the men, one of whom was a juvenile at the time, dumped her on the road and left for dead on the cold winter night. Her friend who was with her was also severely beaten and thrown out along with her. She was so severely violated that her insides were spilling out when she was taken to hospital. She died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.

Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.

While Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

The road to the gallows was a long and circuitous one, going through the lower courts, the High Court, the Supreme Court and the president's office before going back to the Supreme Court that heard and rejected various curative petitions.

The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.

On March 5, a trial court issued fresh death warrants for March 20 at 5.30 am as the final date for the execution.