By Vineet Dikshit

NewsGate Press Network

All four convicts on a death row in ‘Nirbhaya’ case were hanged together on Friday, 20-March-2020 at the Tihar Central Jail.

This is for the first time ever in India when four convicts sentenced for murder were hanged in one go.

The condemned convicts namely Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am.

All four were convicted for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old on 16-December-2012. The victim who came to be known as Nirbhaya, the fearless one.

At around 6.22 am, Director General of Tihar Jail Sandeep Goel said, “Doctor has examined the bodies and declared all 4 dead,”

Jail officials said the bodies were kept hanging for half an hour, a mandatory procedure after execution as per the prison manual.

The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows.

Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22.

In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging.

Hours before the execution, Pawan Kumar Gupta approached the Supreme Court challenging rejection of the second mercy petition by the President.

In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea, paving the way for the execution.

It also refused to pass any direction allowing Gupta and Akshay Singh to meet their family members just before they are sent to the gallows.

Relieved that their daughter finally got justice after a seven-year-long legal struggle, Nirbhaya’s parents said they will continue their “fight for India’s daughters”.

On the day of the crime 16-December-2012, after raping and brutalising Nirbhaya, the men, one of whom was a juvenile at the time, dumped her on the road and left for dead on the cold winter night.

Her friend who was with her was also severely beaten and thrown out along with her.

She died in a Singapore hospital after battling for her life for a fortnight.

Six criminals including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.

While one criminal Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.