India’s top court is set to hear a plea against the release of an attacker in the 2012 deadly gang rape of a student, which provoked international outrage, after a women’s rights body filed a petition early yesterday.
Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Commission of Women, submitted the petition to the Indian Supreme Court at 1am, seeking a stay just hours before the convict was to walk free after serving the maximum three-year sentence for juvenile offenders.
The court would take up the plea today, pending which Maliwal hoped the offender would not be released.
“SC accepted [our] petition. Matter listed on Monday as item No 3. Case subjudice now. Nirbhaya rapist should not be released until case heard,” Maliwal said on Twitter.
The attacker was the youngest of a group of men who brutally assaulted a 23-year-old student on a bus in 2012, triggering global outrage and protests in India over the country’s high levels of violence against women.
He was sent to a correction home for three years under India’s juvenile laws, while four others were convicted and handed the death penalty last year. The convicts’ appeals against the hangings is pending in the Supreme Court.
The student, who succumbed to her injuries two weeks after the attack, was publicly named by her mother on the third anniversary of her death last week, in an effort to end the stigma facing sex attack victims in India.
Under Indian laws, the identity of rape victims is not revealed even after death, although victims and their families can waive their right to anonymity.
The parents and women’s rights groups have been opposing the release of the youngest attacker, mainly on the grounds that it was unclear if he had been rehabilitated and was ready to be reintegrated into society.
On Saturday, the parents and scores of students holding placards and banners demonstrated outside the juvenile detention center in Delhi where the offender was held.
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