Nirbhaya gets justice, all 4 convicts hanged at Tihar jail

New Delhi: The four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case were hanged at 5:30 today, seven years and three months after they brutalised a 23-year-old woman in a moving Delhi bus with a barbarity that shook the nation.

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.

In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging. In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea.

Finally, the four convicts were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goel said.

After the execution, Nirbhaya’s mother told reporters that justice has finally been done and women will definitely feel safer now.

“We will request the Supreme Court to issue guidelines so that no one can adopt delaying tactics in such cases in future,” she said at her house.

“Our wait for justice was painful and agonising. We appeal for observing this day as Nirbhaya ‘Nyay Diwas’ (day of justice),” Nirbhaya’s father said.

Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31), held guilty for gangraping a physiotherapy intern in Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012 so savagely that she died of her injuries a fortnight later, were executed in Tihar Jail’s Cell No. 3.

All legal routes to escape the noose closed on Thursday for the four men. The Supreme Court refused to entertain Mukesh Singh’s last ditch plea that he was not in the city when the crime took place. A bench of Justices of R Bhanumati, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna said he had exhausted all his remedies and no fresh evidence can be entertained.

The apex court also dismissed Akshay Kumar’s plea challenging the rejection of his second mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind, saying no ground was made out for a judicial review of the decision.

On a parallel track, a Delhi court dismissed the pleas of Akshay Kumar, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma seeking stays on their execution.