Court suspends Delhi gang-rape death sentences
Print Edition
INDIA’S top court yesterday suspended the death sentences of two of the four men convicted of the deadly gang-rape of a student in New Delhi, an attack that triggered international outrage.
The Supreme Court temporarily stayed the sentences passed on gym instructor Vinay Sharma and bus cleaner Akshay Singh for the 2012 attack while their appeals were examined, a lawyer said.
“The sentence was stayed by the court after we filed the special leave petition,” AP Singh, who represents the two men, said.
“We want a full bench to hear this appeal. The claims against my clients are totally false, they have been wrongly accused,” he added.
“They were not even in Delhi when this crime was supposed to have happened.”
Four adults were convicted and sentenced to death last year for raping the 23-year-old woman on a bus in the capital in December 2012, a crime that unleashed weeks of angry protests over India’s treatment of women.
The High Court in March this year upheld the death penalty on the four, including Sharma and Singh, calling the crime “gruesome” and saying the case fell into the “rarest of rare category” which warranted execution.
The other two convicts, Mukesh Singh and Pawan Gupta, have already filed an appeal, with their sentences also on hold.
The victim, who worked in a call center while she studied, became a symbol of the daily dangers women face in a country where a rape is reported on average every 21 minutes and acid attacks and incidents of molestation are common.
During the seven-month trial, a fifth defendant hanged himself in his cell. A sixth, who was under 18 at the time of the attack, was sentenced to three years’ detention, the maximum allowed under juvenile law.
The minister for women and child development, Maneka Gandhi, told reporters on Sunday that juveniles accused of crimes such as rape and murder should be treated on a par with adult offenders.
In response to the public outcry after the rape, the government fast-tracked tougher laws against sex crimes, but it resisted calls to change the law relating to juveniles under 18.
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