India yesterday hanged four men who were convicted for the rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012, in a case that shocked the world and shamed the country over its appalling record for crimes against women.
The men were executed at dawn in Tihar Jail, on the outskirts of the capital, two prison officials said.
Hundreds of police were deployed outside the jail to control a crowd that waited to celebrate the execution. Some held placards that read: “Justice for women” and “Hang the culprits.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
The crime, which happened on the night of Dec. 16, 2012, sparked massive protests and global outrage. The victim was dubbed Nirbhaya — “the fearless one” — by the Indian press, as she could not be named under Indian law.
“Today, justice has been done after seven years,” the victim’s mother told reporters outside the prison. “I salute the Indian judiciary and thank god for hearing our prayers... My daughter’s soul can now rest in peace.”
Six men were arrested for the brutal attack. One suspect, Ram Singh, was found dead in his jail cell in March 2013, having apparently taken his own life.
Another, who was aged 17 at the time, was released in 2015 after serving three years in a reform facility — the maximum term possible for a juvenile in India.
The four hanged yesterday were gym instructor Vinay Sharma, bus cleaner Akshay Thakur, fruit seller Pawan Gupta and unemployed Mukesh Singh, who were all sentenced to death by a fast-track court in 2013.
The Indian Supreme Court in 2017 upheld death sentences against four men, with judges ruling that the crime met the “rarest of the rare” standard required to justify capital punishment in India.
After the court dismissed their pleas for a review of the death sentences, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind rejected pleas for clemency from the condemned men.
Attacked on a moving bus and left for dead on a roadside, the victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, clung to life for two weeks before succumbing to her injuries. She died in a hospital in Singapore, where she had been transferred in a desperate attempt to save her.
Outrage over her death led to India passing tough new laws against sexual violence, including the death penalty for rape in some cases.
Still, one woman reported a rape every 15 minutes on average in India in 2018, according to government data released last month, underlining the country’s reputation as one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.
Women reported almost 34,000 rapes in 2018, barely changed from the year before, while about 85 percent led to charges and 27 percent to convictions, the annual crime report released by the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Women’s rights advocates have said that the government statistics understate the number of rapes, as it is still considered a taboo by conservative Indians to report sexual violence.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
The Philippines yesterday slammed an “irresponsible” Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the “status quo” was unchanged. Tiexian Reef (鐵線礁), also known as Sandy Cay Reef, lies near Thitu Island, or Pagasa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday said that the China Coast Guard had “implemented maritime control” over Tiexian Reef in the middle of this month. The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its
RSS