The World News:- The prosecutor while in the fatal New Delhi gang rape known
as Wednesday for all 4 convicted rapists to get hanged, though one of several
defendants shouted out his innocence as law enforcement drove him into your
courthouse.
It was not obvious which from the four males was shouting, due to the fact his facial area was obscured driving the law enforcement van's major steel mesh, but he continuously called out, "I am innocent! I am harmless!" because the van drove earlier a scrum of reporters.
The boys have been convicted Tuesday within the December gang rape of a 23-year-old lady on a going New Delhi bus, a brutal criminal offense that unleashed a wave of community anger over the treatment of Indian girls in addition to a long-unspoken epidemic of sexual violence. The sufferer died two weeks soon after the attack.
The four face possibly existence imprisonment or death by hanging. Phone calls to the adult men for being executed have developed significantly loud, with every person within the victim's parents to major political leaders demanding the men be sentenced to dying.
Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said the attack stunned India's "collective conscience," noting the law enforcement report showed the lads pulled out a few of the victim's physique parts immediately after savagely penetrating her using an iron rod.
It was not obvious which from the four males was shouting, due to the fact his facial area was obscured driving the law enforcement van's major steel mesh, but he continuously called out, "I am innocent! I am harmless!" because the van drove earlier a scrum of reporters.
The boys have been convicted Tuesday within the December gang rape of a 23-year-old lady on a going New Delhi bus, a brutal criminal offense that unleashed a wave of community anger over the treatment of Indian girls in addition to a long-unspoken epidemic of sexual violence. The sufferer died two weeks soon after the attack.
The four face possibly existence imprisonment or death by hanging. Phone calls to the adult men for being executed have developed significantly loud, with every person within the victim's parents to major political leaders demanding the men be sentenced to dying.
Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said the attack stunned India's "collective conscience," noting the law enforcement report showed the lads pulled out a few of the victim's physique parts immediately after savagely penetrating her using an iron rod.
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"There is usually nothing far more diabolic than
a helpless woman place as a
result of torture," he claimed.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said he would hand down the sentences on Friday.
The four men sat in in the back of the tiny courtroom in T-shirts or short-sleeved polo shirts, unshackled and with policemen holding them from both sides. They appeared impassive, though it was not clear how much they understood of the proceedings. Most of the day's arguments were in English, a language that only one of the men, Vinay Sharma, is able to speak. They had no translator.
The defense lawyers have long proclaimed their clients' innocence, while sometimes indicating some of the men may have been on the bus. They insist that any confessions were coerced by police torture.
On Wednesday, they called for the judge to avoid the death penalty.
"If they have committed a mistake, and the court accepted that they committed a mistake, then they should be given a chance to reform," lawyer A.P. Singh, who has worked with all the defendants at various times, said outside the courthouse. "The accused are not habitual and professional criminals. They should be given one chance to reform themselves."
Vivek Sharma, a lawyer representing Pawan Gupta, a 19-year-old fruit vendor, asked for a sentence of life imprisonment, noting that Indian law calls for execution only in very exceptional cases.
Sharma said Wednesday the crime may have happened "on the spur of the moment" and urged leniency for his client because of his age and because he had to support his impoverished family. He said Gupta did not join in the rape or in violating the victim with the rod.
The family of the victim watched from one row in front of the prisoners, close enough to touch one another.
When the hearing ended, they again called for the men to be hanged.
"They finished our daughter," said the father, who cannot be named under Indian laws guarding his daughter's identity as a rape victim. "We want them finished."
An airport baggage handler who makes a little more than $200 a month, he and his wife had broken with the conservative rural culture in which they had been raised, encouraging their daughter to study hard and even leave home to get a degree in physiotherapy. At the time of the attack, she was awaiting her exam results.
India's Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should only be used in "the rarest of rare cases," though what defines those cases remains highly debated.
By most estimates, more than 100 people are sentenced to death in India in most years, but the vast majority of those cases are eventually commuted to life in prison.
India had an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment that lasted eight years, ending with the November 2012 execution of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunmen in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Two months later, Mohammad Afzal Guru, convicted in a deadly 2001 attack on India's Parliament, was also hanged.
Indian media reports say about 400 prisoners are believed to be currently awaiting execution.
In addition to their confessions, the four convicted rapists were identified by the woman's male friend who was with her on the night of the attack. The two were coming home from a movie when the men tricked them into boarding a bus they were joy-riding. They quickly beat the friend into submission, held the woman down and took turns raping her. They also penetrated her with the rod, causing severe internal injuries that led to her death.
The defendants, like the victim, come from poor and ill-educated families. One, Mukesh Singh, occasionally drove the bus where the crime occurred and cleaned it. Another, Vinay Sharma, was a 20-year-old assistant at a gym and the only one of the attackers to graduate from high school. Akshay Thakur, 28, occasionally worked as a driver's helper on the bus.
With them on the bus were two other men. Police say Ram Singh, 33, hanged himself in prison, though his family insists he was murdered. He was the brother of Mukesh Singh. Another man - an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack and cannot be identified under Indian law - was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence he faced, three years in a reform home.
About two dozen protesters gathered Wednesday by the courthouse, calling for the four men to be executed and taunting defense lawyers.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said he would hand down the sentences on Friday.
The four men sat in in the back of the tiny courtroom in T-shirts or short-sleeved polo shirts, unshackled and with policemen holding them from both sides. They appeared impassive, though it was not clear how much they understood of the proceedings. Most of the day's arguments were in English, a language that only one of the men, Vinay Sharma, is able to speak. They had no translator.
The defense lawyers have long proclaimed their clients' innocence, while sometimes indicating some of the men may have been on the bus. They insist that any confessions were coerced by police torture.
On Wednesday, they called for the judge to avoid the death penalty.
"If they have committed a mistake, and the court accepted that they committed a mistake, then they should be given a chance to reform," lawyer A.P. Singh, who has worked with all the defendants at various times, said outside the courthouse. "The accused are not habitual and professional criminals. They should be given one chance to reform themselves."
Vivek Sharma, a lawyer representing Pawan Gupta, a 19-year-old fruit vendor, asked for a sentence of life imprisonment, noting that Indian law calls for execution only in very exceptional cases.
Sharma said Wednesday the crime may have happened "on the spur of the moment" and urged leniency for his client because of his age and because he had to support his impoverished family. He said Gupta did not join in the rape or in violating the victim with the rod.
The family of the victim watched from one row in front of the prisoners, close enough to touch one another.
When the hearing ended, they again called for the men to be hanged.
"They finished our daughter," said the father, who cannot be named under Indian laws guarding his daughter's identity as a rape victim. "We want them finished."
An airport baggage handler who makes a little more than $200 a month, he and his wife had broken with the conservative rural culture in which they had been raised, encouraging their daughter to study hard and even leave home to get a degree in physiotherapy. At the time of the attack, she was awaiting her exam results.
India's Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should only be used in "the rarest of rare cases," though what defines those cases remains highly debated.
By most estimates, more than 100 people are sentenced to death in India in most years, but the vast majority of those cases are eventually commuted to life in prison.
India had an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment that lasted eight years, ending with the November 2012 execution of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunmen in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Two months later, Mohammad Afzal Guru, convicted in a deadly 2001 attack on India's Parliament, was also hanged.
Indian media reports say about 400 prisoners are believed to be currently awaiting execution.
In addition to their confessions, the four convicted rapists were identified by the woman's male friend who was with her on the night of the attack. The two were coming home from a movie when the men tricked them into boarding a bus they were joy-riding. They quickly beat the friend into submission, held the woman down and took turns raping her. They also penetrated her with the rod, causing severe internal injuries that led to her death.
The defendants, like the victim, come from poor and ill-educated families. One, Mukesh Singh, occasionally drove the bus where the crime occurred and cleaned it. Another, Vinay Sharma, was a 20-year-old assistant at a gym and the only one of the attackers to graduate from high school. Akshay Thakur, 28, occasionally worked as a driver's helper on the bus.
With them on the bus were two other men. Police say Ram Singh, 33, hanged himself in prison, though his family insists he was murdered. He was the brother of Mukesh Singh. Another man - an 18-year-old who was a juvenile at the time of the attack and cannot be identified under Indian law - was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence he faced, three years in a reform home.
About two dozen protesters gathered Wednesday by the courthouse, calling for the four men to be executed and taunting defense lawyers.
