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Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty in India Rape Case Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty in India Rape Case
(about 3 hours later)
NEW DELHI — Prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the death sentence for four men who participated in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in December, a goal long sought by the victim’s family and many Indians who were horrified by the case. NEW DELHI — Prosecutors on Wednesday asked for the death sentence for four men convicted of participating in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old student in December, calling the crime “a case of extreme depravity” and arguing that the public would be outraged if the men were not hanged.
“There can be nothing more diabolic than a helpless girl put through torture,” said Dayan Krishnan, a prosecutor, as arguments began in the trial’s sentencing phase. He called the attack “a case of extreme depravity,” and made the case that society would be outraged by anything less than the death sentence. “The common man will lose faith in the judiciary if the harshest punishment is not given,” Dayan Krishnan, a special prosecutor, told the judge in the case, who is expected to deliver the sentences — either the death penalty or life in prison — for each man on Friday. But A.P. Singh, a defense lawyer, called execution “a primitive and coldblooded and simplistic response to complex issues.”
“The common man will lose faith in the judiciary if the harshest punishment is not given,” he said. “Awarding the death penalty will not end crime in the streets,” Mr. Singh said, according to pool reporters in the courtroom.
All four men were convicted of all the charges against them on Tuesday, but to most, the verdict seemed far less important than the sentence. Defense lawyers on Wednesday said the sentence should take into account the fact that some of the defendants were present for the most savage parts of the attack, but did not take part. The sentence is to be handed down on Friday. Both views represent powerful strains in Indian society.
A cry for the men to be hanged went up almost immediately after the woman died of her injuries, and some of the protesters who flooded the streets carried nooses. In the rush of emotion that followed the case, the Indian government amended the criminal code so that the death penalty — legal, though rarely used in India — could be applied in particularly brutal cases of rape. India has steadfastly resisted efforts to repeal the death penalty, which was codified under British rule. But it almost never carries out executions, and a 1980 Supreme Court ruling confines their use to “the rarest of rare cases.” Only three people have been hanged in the last nine years — one found guilty of murder and rape and two convicted of participating in terrorist attacks.
“These men should be hung until death, because they don’t deserve to live in our society,” the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, told a news channel Tuesday night. And Indian news services released a partial text from the dying woman’s statement to the police, which specifically asked that her assailants be executed, as a deterrent to other criminals. The gang rape of the young woman in December, detailed minutely by India’s news media, has provided a test for an ambivalent country. In a rush of emotion, the Indian government amended the criminal code so that the death penalty could be applied in particularly brutal cases of rape. In a statement to a court official before her death, the victim herself called for the men’s death.
“They should be hanged, so that such an incident does not happen with another woman,” the statement read, according to text provided to IANS, a news service. “They should be burned alive.”“They should be hanged, so that such an incident does not happen with another woman,” the statement read, according to text provided to IANS, a news service. “They should be burned alive.”
According to a ruling by India’s Supreme Court in 1980, the death penalty can only be applied in the “rarest of rare” cases. Last year, 14 former judges appealed to the president of India to use his powers to commute the sentences of 13 people placed on death row from 1996 to 2009, after the Supreme Court acknowledged that the 13 had been erroneously charged. Prosecutors on Wednesday projected confidence, focusing their argument largely on the disturbing nature of the crime: When the victim and a male friend boarded a private bus, hoping for a ride home, the men attacked them, knocking the man unconscious and taking the woman to the back of the bus. They raped her, then severely damaged her internal organs with a metal rod. They dumped the two on the roadside, naked and bleeding.
The rape of the 23-year-old woman — who cannot be named, according to Indian law, but has been called Nirbhaya, or “Fearless” — stood out for its horror, even in this sprawling and chaotic city. Her injuries were so severe that she died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
The woman was returning home from a movie with a male friend and boarded a private bus with a group of men, mostly working-class migrants who the police said had been drinking. While the bus circled New Delhi, the men attacked the two friends, knocked the man unconscious and took the woman to the back of the bus and raped her, sometimes using a metal rod. The two were dumped by a roadside, naked and bleeding. “The test is, ‘Was the collective conscience shocked?' ” Mr. Krishnan asked on Wednesday, according to pool reports. “There can be no better example than this case.” He described the crime as “diabolical,” and said, “There is no element of sympathy in the way this helpless woman was tortured.” As a precedent, Mr. Krishnan cited the case of a watchman who was hanged in 2004 for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.
The woman died two weeks later of her injuries. This view is widely supported by the public. Shabnam, a 40-year-old housewife who was watching the furor around the courtroom on Wednesday, said India would benefit from dispensing with the legal niceties in rape cases.
Her death seemed to open a vault here, and nine months later reports of rape still saturate the country’s newspapers — whether because of increased attacks or increased reporting is not clear. Under pressure to respond to the surge of public anger, the government toughened laws on sexual violence. But the drumbeat of fresh reports offers little hope that this society has tackled the problem, and foreign women have become increasingly wary of traveling to India. “They are like worms, and if were up to me, I would gather all these worms together and kill them,” she said of the defendants. “And if that happened to my daughter, I would take a sword and cut them into pieces.”
Judge Yogesh Khanna, in issuing his 240-page judgment on Tuesday, told the court: “I convict all the accused. They have been found guilty of gang rape, unnatural offenses, destruction of the evidence, and of committing the murder of the helpless victim.” The defense could take some comfort in a 1980 judgment by the Supreme Court, which overturned a death sentence for a convicted murderer and introduced the phrase “rarest of the rare cases.” Prisoners are entitled to appeal to the Supreme Court and finally to the president, a process that can stretch out into years; 477 people are now on death row, according to Amnesty International.
Prosecutors have argued that all the men were equally guilty, even though the most brutal part of the attack was perpetrated by Ram Singh, who was found hanged from a bedsheet in his prison cell in March. V. K. Anand, who defended one of the convicted men, Mukesh Singh, noted that his client had shown compassion during the trial, instructing him not to challenge the victim’s mother in court.
Defense lawyers tried to shoot down that logic on Wednesday, hoping that their clients would receive instead a sentence of life imprisonment. “Mukesh told me, ‘Don’t cross-examine the girl’s mother — she has lost her daughter, leave her alone,' ” he said. “I could have grilled her, could have brought out other things.” His client, he went on, had no criminal record, was under the influence of alcohol and was driving the bus while the woman was attacked.
“He was only driving the bus, nothing else,” said V. K. Anand, who is representing Mukesh Singh, Ram Singh’s brother, before entering the courtroom. “He hasn’t done anything.” “At best, he can be held for aiding the others,” he said. “He can’t be given death for this.”
In the cramped settlements that were home to the defendants, some neighbors said the case had cast a stain on all of them and expressed the hope that the men would receive the toughest punishment possible. Soon after Mukesh Singh was arrested in December, an unknown attacker tried to detonate two crude bombs in front of his home. Vivek Sharma, the lawyer for another defendant, a fruit seller named Pawan Gupta, challenged the judge’s key finding that the attack was a premeditated conspiracy, saying there is “a possibility that it happened on the spur of the moment.” He noted that his client was 19, which he described as “a tender age.”
But Ram Bai, a wraithlike woman who is mother to the Singh brothers, maintains that her surviving son is innocent and has made it a point to attend the trial, if only to be near him for a few hours. “When I sat next to him in the courtroom, sometimes I just wanted to reach out and hold my son,” she said, sobbing. “All I can do is pray to God now. God will be the final judge.” “A possibility of his reformation is there,” he said.
But the defendants and their lawyers could not feel much certainty as they exited the courthouse on Wednesday, threading their way through a crowd of agitated protesters whose customary chant, “Hang the criminals,” was accompanied by a new one, “Hang the lawyers.” One man held up a piece of yellow poster board with a childish drawing of four men stepping forward into hangman’s nooses.
And many were braced for Friday’s ruling, which could set precedents for the country’s use of the death penalty. Karuna Nundy, an lawyer who has argued before India’s Supreme Court and the High Court of New Delhi, said she was frustrated by the argument that the death penalty would keep men from committing rapes, despite its undeniable appeal to the general public.
“The government needs to lead the people, not the other way ′round,” she said. “Wiping out four men is neither here nor there. We need to strike at the root of the problem.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 11, 2013Correction: September 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the judge who issued the 240-page ruling. The judge, Yogesh Khanna, is a man.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the judge who issued the 240-page ruling. The judge, Yogesh Khanna, is a man.