India Convicts 4 of Murder in Gang-Rape Case

Four men have been found guilty of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in December in New Delhi. The WSJ's Paul Beckett tells Deborah Kan why there is still a long way to go for women to be safer in India.

NEW DELHI—An Indian court convicted four men in the gang rape and killing of a 23-year-old student in December, a case that horrified the nation and sparked a wide-ranging debate about violence against women in the world’s second-most-populous country.
After hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses in a trial that lasted seven months, Judge Yogesh Khanna found the defendants guilty of a series of charges including kidnapping, rape and murder.

The men, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Kumar Singh, could face the death penalty or life imprisonment. A lawyer for Mr. Gupta said the men “were tearful” as the verdict was read. All four had denied guilt.
A.P. Singh, the lawyer for Mr. Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, told reporters, “This decision is due to political pressure. These men were innocent.”
A sentencing hearing is set for Wednesday. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty. Vivek Sharma, a lawyer for Mr. Gupta, said, “We will argue against capital punishment tomorrow.”

The shocking brutality of the December crime—in which police said the victim was sexually assaulted with an iron bar and repeatedly raped by her attackers—jolted India, touching off protest marches and sparking a reconsideration of long-held attitudes toward women’s rights.

“There are certain historical moments when people feel this is the last straw,” said Kalpana Viswanath, an activist with Delhi-based women’s rights group Jagori.

Timeline: The Delhi Rape Case

Under public pressure, laws have been rewritten to make voyeurism and stalking criminal offenses and to increase the penalties for rape. Police are adding more female officers and improving training. The number of reported rape cases is up sharply this year, as more victims have been willing to come forward.

Lawyers and rights groups say the sexual assault and killing of a young woman in India are changing sexual-violence laws. The Wall Street Journal asks a legal expert whether the reforms are enough to protect women.

Still, social attitudes are resistant to change in a country where women face discrimination and often find themselves blamed for the violence against them. Gang rapes continue in cities and rural areas and women say they have become far more cautious when out in public.
The 46-year-old mother of the woman assaulted in December, who was in court Tuesday, said: “We will wait for the sentencing. Only after that we will comment further.”
She and her husband have said the men convicted of the crime should be executed. “It’s not anger,” the mother said. “We’re asking for the death sentence because we don’t want anyone else’s daughter to face what happened with our daughter.”
Indian law and judicial rulings on this case bar the naming of the victim or her family members.
December’s events unfolded after the victim, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, and a male friend went to see a movie at a New Delhi mall, just steps away from the courthouse where her attackers were convicted Tuesday.

Headed home, they boarded a bus, where prosecutors said they were accosted by six men who beat and restrained the victim’s companion and then repeatedly raped her as the bus drove around the heart of the Indian capital. The assailants then dumped the pair, naked and bleeding, by the roadside.
The woman died from her injuries about two weeks later in a hospital in Singapore, where she had been flown for treatment. Her friend was one of the main prosecution witnesses against her attackers.
In a statement to a magistrate made from her hospital bed just days before she died, the rape victim said that she wanted the men who had “tortured and violated” her for at least an hour to be executed.
“Were you conscious the whole time and aware of what was happening to you?” the magistrate asked. “I knew what was happening to me half the time,” the young woman responded. “At times I lost consciousness.”
Three of the defendants maintained in court that they were not present when the crime was committed. A fourth, Mukesh Singh, said he was driving the bus and was unaware that an attack was occurring.
Prosecutors presented DNA evidence that they said linked all of the men to the crime.
On Tuesday, Judge Khanna said in his verdict that “the facts make all the accused liable for the cold-blooded murder of the defenseless” victim. He also wrote: “All these acts were done in a premeditated manner.”
Hira Lal Gupta, father of accused Pawan Gupta said he was “disappointed” with the court’s decision. “My son is paying the price of being in wrong company. I just hope he doesn’t get death,” he said.
“I’m happy with the verdict. This means a lot for women’s safety not just in this city, but also in the country,” said Bihari Lal, a local leader in the New Delhi slum area where three of the men tried had lived before the attack.

Manish Swarup/Associated Press
A van carried the four men to court before they were convicted Tuesday.

In addition to the four men found guilty Tuesday, a fifth adult defendant in the case was found dead in his jail cell in March. Authorities said he committed suicide. His family alleges he was killed. His death is under investigation.
A teenager charged in the case was tried separately by a juvenile court. He was sentenced late last month to three years in a reformatory—the maximum punishment allowed under India’s youthful offender laws—after a board found he participated in the attack. That ruling angered rights activists and fueled calls for a revamp of the country’s justice system.
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Write to Vibhuti Agarwal at vibhuti.agarwal@wsj.com, Saurabh Chaturvedi at Saurabh.Chaturvedi@wsj.com and Tripti Lahiri at tripti.lahiri@wsj.com

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