Police seeks death penalty
Source: The Sangai Express / Agencies

New Delhi, September 11 2013: A fast track court, which has convicted four persons in the December 16 gangrape-cum-murder case, today fixed September 13 for pronouncing the quantum of sentence to be awarded to them.

Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna reserved the order on punishment after hearing arguments of the prosecution, which sought death penalty for the four, and the defence lawyers.

The Delhi Police sought death penalty for the four for brutally gangraping and murdering a defenceless 23-year-old girl in a cold blooded manner.

Advancing arguments on quantum of sentence, Special Public Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said the death sentence should be awarded to the four convicts�Mukesh (26), Vinay Sharma (20), Pawan Gupta (19) and Akshay Thakur (28)�as the case falls in the category of "rarest of rare" cases.

The defence lawyers, however, sought a lenient punishment for the convicts, saying life imprisonment in such a case is a rule while death penalty is an exception.

During the arguments, the prosecutor told the Court that the convicts do not deserve any mercy, as they killed the helpless girl who kept on pleading for mercy.

He said people at large are watching this case and if the convicts are awarded a lighter punishment, the public will lose faith in the judicial system.

The prosecutor said as per an apex court judgement when there is murder after gangrape, the sentence should be death penalty.

At the start of arguments on point of sentence, convict Mukesh moved an application seeking issuance of contempt notice against Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde for his reported statement that death is assured for the four convicts in the case.

In the 237-page judgement, which had come six days short of nine months of the incident that shook the nation's conscience, also found complicity of main accused Ram Singh, who was found dead in Tihar jail during the trial.

On August 31, the juvenile accused was convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home.

On the night of December 16, last year, Ram Singh, Vinay, Akshay, Pawan, Mukesh and the juvenile had gangraped the girl in a bus after luring her and her 28-year-old male friend, who was also assaulted, on board the vehicle, which was later found to be plying illegally on Delhi roads.

The limbs of the victim's friend, a software engineer, were fractured in the incident.

The girl succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at a Singapore hospital.

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