Nirbhaya
In picture: Women carry a floral tribute at an event to mark the anniversary of the brutal gang rape of a student on a bus in Delhi, outside the Indian High Commission in central London, December 16, 2013.Reuters File
  • Kiran Bedi, pleased with the SC verdict, tweeted: "Nirbhya finally gets Justice. It was most gruesome crime. This is rarest of rare in a death penalty award.Gratitude to all officers/experts who did a perfect investigation by a team led by then Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar. Fit case for judicial/law/police academies."
  • Nirbhaya's lawyer Rohan Mahajan lauded the SC decision and said: "It is a victorious moment. Faith in the judiciary has been reinstated. We are satisfied today. The only request to the Central govt is to expedite whatever process is to follow now."
  • "I welcome this decision as it proves justice can be delayed but not denied. It's a landmark decision. This judgement shows that law takes its own course in this country: Rekha Sharma, Chairman of NCW, added. 
  • "All accused were given adequate time to be heard," the SC said in his decision.
  • Speaking of the verdict, Badrinath Singh, Nirbhaya's father told ANI: "We knew that review petition will be dismissed. But what next? So much time has gone by & threat to women have gone up in this span. I believe sooner they're hanged, better it is."
  • "It's a legal procedure, which we want to end soon with the rapists being hanged. Like my daughter has got justice, I hope all daughters of India to get justice. Even if Nirbhaya's rapists are not hanged, I will be satisfied that at least the government has made a law for death penalty of rapists, following the 2012 Delhi gangrape incident," Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi added.
  • They were not juveniles. It is unfortunate that they committed such crime. This decision reaffirms our trust in the court that we will definitely get justice: Asha Devi
  • Nirbhaya's family has said that they were "happy with the judgement."
  • Rejecting the arguments the chief justice said: "What are you arguing..Please make a case for review. Tell us how our conclusion is wrong.. prove our analysis of DNA and dying declaration was wrong, the investigation was perverse etc. You are only repeating what you argued earlier and raising several new points which are not admissible at review stage."
  • After the verdict was pronounced, the counsel for the rapists has blamed the media for the order. He said that the SC has taken the decision due to media pressure
  • The rapists can now file a curative petition
  • The Supreme Court has dismissed the review plea of three of the rapists and upheld the death penalty 
  • The four rapists will be hanged till death
  • The SC said that there were no grounds to reconsider the 2017 decision
  • The verdict is expected shortly 
  • Judges arrive in courtroom
  • Three rapists have filed a petition for review of the death penalty.
  • Akshay Kumar Singh is yet to file a plea
  • Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma filed the petition after SC upheld the Delhi High Court's death penalty order
  • Speaking of the case, Nirbhaya's mother had earlier said: "No one knew my daughter before the December 16 gangrape... But all of you, the men and women of this nation, helped her get justice and the accused their punishment."
  • "This fight against rape is not just that of an individual. It's the fight of every man and woman. So, we all share the responsibility to curb such crimes. Even as we speak, a girl or a woman is being raped somewhere in our country," she added 
  • The SC had earlier called the gangrape "brutal, barbaric and diabolic."

The Supreme Court pronounced its verdict on the review pleas of three of the four convicts' death penalty in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case on Monday, July 9. A decision was announced by a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

The apex court had in 2017 upheld the death penalty awarded to the four convicts by the Delhi High Court after which three of them -- Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23), had filed a review petition. Akshay Kumar Singh (31) has not filed any such request yet.

However, Advocate A P Singh, representing Akshay said: "Akshay has not filed a review petition yet. We will be filing it," reported the Press Trust of India.

In its previous judgement, the SC had said that "the brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature" of the crime was capable of creating "a tsunami of shock" that could destroy a civilised society.

"The casual manner with which she was treated and the devilish manner in which they played with her identity and dignity is humanly inconceivable. It sounds like a story from a different world where humanity has been treated with irreverence," Justices Misra and Bhushan had said at the time, according to the Times of India. "The appetite for sex, the hunger for violence, the position of the empowered and the attitude of perversity to say the least, are bound to shock the collective conscience which knows not what to do."

The Delhi case involves six people of which Ram Singh is said to have committed suicide in Tihar jail and another was a juvenile convicted by a juvenile justice board. He served a three-year term in a reformation home and was released in 2016.

The gangrape and murder of the 23-year-old paramedic student on December 16, 2012, in New Delhi shook the nation and brought hundreds of people out on the streets in protest. The girl was gangraped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus. The rapists severely assaulted, gangraped and tortured her on the night and her friend was also beaten up. They were then thrown out of the bus.

Nirbhaya fought for her life for several days and 11 days after the assault, she was transferred to a hospital in Singapore for emergency treatment. However, she succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.