SC upholds death sentence for convicts in Nirbhaya case

After 4 long years and countless prayers from around the world, justice finally prevailed in the Nirbhaya gangrape case. The Supreme Court of India, on Friday, upheld the death sentence in the case saying that the brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature of the crime shook the conscience of humanity and they deserved the extreme punishment. Accepting the fact that the case was one which fell in the rarest of rare category, the Bench decided to award death penalty to all the four convicts in the case. A three judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan in a unanimous verdict held Vinay Sharma (23), Akshay Thakur (31), Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22) guilty. Sadly, nothing could be done in the case of the fifth convict as he was adjudged to be a minor and hence left without any trial. Much had been written about the gangrape in the media and the outrage of the people was finally satiated when the Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision of a death sentence. The Nirbhaya case had become one of the turning points in India's fight against women violence and rape cases. & quot The casual manner with which she was treated and the devilish manner in which they played with her identity and dignity is humanly inconceivable. It sounds like a story from a different world where humanity has been treated with irreverence. The appetite for sex, the hunger for violence, the position of the empowered and the attitude of perversity, to say the least, are bound to shock the collective conscience which knows not what to do,& quot Justices Misra and Bhushan said. & quot It is absolutely obvious that the accused persons had found an object for enjoyment in her and, as is evident, they were obsessed with the singular purpose sans any feeling to ravish her as they liked, treat her as they felt and, if we allow ourselves to say, the gross sadistic and beastly instinctual pleasures came to the forefront when they, after ravishing her, thought it to be just a matter of routine to throw her alongwith her friend out of the bus and crush them,& quot Justice Misra wrote without mincing any words. & quot It is manifest that the wanton lust, the servility to absolutely unchained carnal desire and slavery to the loathsome bestiality of passion ruled the mindset of the appellants to commit a crime which can summon with immediacy & quot tsunami& quot of shock in the mind of the collective and destroy the civilised marrows of the milieu in entirety,& quot he added. In a separate but concurring judgement, Justice Banumathi elaborated that mitigating considerations like young age, poor background, often cited by the convicts seeking leniency from courts, cannot be applied in this case. She said that post-crime remorse and post-crime good conduct of the accused, absence of criminal antecedents cannot be cited as attenuating considerations to take the case out of the category of & quot rarest of rare cases& quot . Earlier the convicts had pleaded for leniency on the grounds that they come from small villages and have a poor background and also that they had exhibited good conduct in jail. But the Bench dismissed their plea and explained that such acts could not diminish the intensity of the case or the crime. The 429-paged judgment was scathing in its remarks pertaining to the increasing crimes against women in our country. Emphasis was also laid on the & quot brutal, barbaric and demonic& quot manner in which the rape was committed.

LawRato.com & ndash India's leading legal advice platform has been helping Nirbhaya's parents in their fight for make this country a safer place for women. LawRato had provided them with experienced lawyers pro-Bono, and are helping raise awareness to make India safe again for our mothers and sisters. A sure shot victory for justice in India and for the womenfolk!