The men convicted of the rape and murder of a young student in 2012 will be executed in early March, an Indian court has ruled, striking down efforts to have their death sentences commuted.
Four of the men found guilty of carrying out the heinous crime will hang on March 3, the court ruled. A lawyer for one of the death row convicts said his client, Vinay Kumar Sharma, suffers from mental illness and should be spared. The judge rejected the last-minute plea – a decision which reportedly elicited applause from spectators in the courtroom.
The convicts are part of a group of men convicted of raping and murdering of a young student on a bus, who later became known as Nirbhaya (“fearless” in Hindi), in 2012. The men were sentenced to death a year later, but remained in prison for some eight years before authorities finally set their execution for January 22. However, last minute appeals have dragged out their executions.
The mother of the murdered girl told local media that she was satisfied with the decision and hoped that the executions would finally take place.
