The execution of four men, sentenced to death for the gang rape of a student on a Delhi bus in 2012, has been postponed once again, Indian justice announced on Monday.
Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur, the four convicted men, are expected to be hanged on Tuesday around 6 a.m. local time (1:30 a.m. French time) in Tihar prison in the Indian capital. At the last minute, a Delhi judge postponed the execution because the request for a presidential pardon of one of the condemned, filed just a few hours before, has not yet been rejected.
Appeals lodged in turn
No new date has been announced. This is the third time that this execution, originally scheduled for January 22, has been postponed on the grounds that the detainees retain judicial options. "We expected it, I am hopeful that the next date is the right one," Badrinath Singh, the victim's father, told reporters. The four detainees, who must be hanged together, have been taking turns for weeks to take turns filing late appeals and thus save time.
Irritated, the justice system had given them in early February a one-week ultimatum to exhaust all their remedies, to no avail. The gang rape in Delhi on December 16, 2012, in which the 23-year-old victim had succumbed to his injuries, had shone a harsh light on the heavy silence surrounding sexual violence in India, the shortcomings of its judicial system in the fight against rape and, beyond that, the treatment of women in Indian society.
Rare executions in the country
The case had caused a shock wave in public opinion and led to gigantic demonstrations in the country. Following the tragedy, the authorities had tightened the legislation against sexual violence and provided for accelerated judicial procedures. Of the six suspects arrested by the police, the suspected ringleader died in custody, officially from suicide.
Another, still a minor at the time, received a reduced sentence due to his age and was released after three years. India rarely applies the death penalty, preferring to commute the death penalty to life imprisonment, and only executes executions in rare emblematic cases. The last hanging in the country dates back to 2015.
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