Two killers who took part in infamous gang-rape in India lose death sentence appeal

Two of the Indian killers who took part in an infamous gang-rape on a moving bus have lost a final appeal against their death sentences. 

Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh were told they will be executed for the 2012 attack next week after the Supreme Court dismissed their plea to reconsider the sentence. 

Sharma, Singh and two others on death row are due to be hanged on January 22 unless the president grants clemency, which is considered unlikely. 

Sharma had claimed ‘systemic and political bias’ against him and said his family would suffer, but a five-judge panel rejected his claims, NDTV reported.  

Vinay Sharma (left) and Mukesh Singh (right) were told they will be executed for the 2012 attack next week after the Supreme Court dismissed their plea to reconsider the sentence

The two men, along with Pawan Gupta and Akshay Kumar Singh, were sentenced to death in 2013 after gang-raping Jyoti Singh on a Delhi bus the previous December. 

The 23-year-old victim, a student who became known as ‘Nirbhaya’ or ‘Fearless’ in India, died of her injuries 12 days after the attack.  

Another suspect hanged himself in prison before his trial began, though his family claims he was killed.

The sixth assailant was a minor at the time of the attack and was sentenced to three years in a reform home.

After years on death row, the four were told earlier this month that a New Delhi court had scheduled the hangings for January 22.  

One of them, Akshay Kumar Singh, filed a review petition earlier this month, after the other three had theirs rejected.

His lawyer accused the judges of bowing to public pressure, but the Supreme Court rejected Singh’s appeal. 

Pawan Gupta (left) and Akshay Kumar Singh (right) were also sentenced to death in 2013 after gang-raping Jyoti Singh on a Delhi bus the previous December

The victim’s parents Asha Devi and Badri Singh are pictured at the Supreme Court in New Delhi in 2018

Sharma’s lawyers told Indian media today that they would file a ‘mercy petition’ to the country’s president in a bid for clemency. 

However, India’s head of state is not expected to intervene in a case which shocked India and brought global attention to the country’s sexual violence epidemic. 

The victim had been heading home with a male friend from a movie theater when six men lured them onto a bus, authorities say.  

With no one else in sight, they beat the man with a metal bar, raped the woman and used the bar to inflict massive internal injuries to her.

The pair were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later.

Jyoti’s mother, Asha Devi, can be seen weeping in front of the courthouse in New Delhi in 2013

The harrowing case caused a surge of protest movements across India with women coming out across the country to report their own experiences of sexual violence 

The assailants were tried relatively quickly in a country where sexual assault cases often languish for years.   

The supreme court’s ruling comes amid a revived debate over sexual violence in India after several headline-grabbing cases in recent weeks.

A woman in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was doused with gasoline and set on fire by five men, including two she had accused of gang rape and who were out on bail, on her way to attend a court hearing in her case.

She died earlier this month at a hospital in New Delhi.

The burned body of a 27-year-old veterinarian was found in late November near the city of Hyderabad in southern India.

Police later fatally shot four men being held on suspicion of raping and killing the woman after investigators took them to the crime scene. 

It drew praise from people frustrated by the pace of the 2012 New Delhi case and condemnation from those who said it undermined the courts’ role.