Nirbhaya and Bilkis Bano
Representational image (left), Bilkis Bano (right)Creative Commons/Bangladesh Press/ Reuters

People have welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the order of death sentence for the four convicts of Nirbhaya gang-rape case. However, soon after the verdict was announced, many others started comparing Nirbhaya case with that of Bilkis Bano gang-rape case.

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The Supreme Court on May 5 announced its judgement of upholding the death sentence for the four convicts by calling it a "rarest of rare" case. The four convicts – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh had gang-raped the victim in a moving bus, and had brutally tortured her, that led to her death.

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The whole nation supported the apex court's verdict as series of tweets applauding the decision started pouring in. Nevertheless, a section of people have also been questioning the difference in penalty between the Nirbhaya rapists and Bilkis Bano rapists.

Bilkis Bano was gangraped and 14 members of her family, including her 2-year-old daughter, were killed by a mob during 2002 Gujarat riots. Bilkis was five months pregnant when she was gang raped. 11 convicts in the case were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Mumbai court in January 2008. Later, the CBI had submitted a plea demanding death sentence for three convicts in the case, and on the other side, the 11 convicts had filed an appeal questioning the verdict.

However, the Bombay High Court on May 4 rejected the convicts' plea and had upheld the life imprisonment for the convicts, but did not order a death sentence. The difference in penalty for the convicts of Nirbhaya case and Bilkis Bano case gave rise to a new debate - Is Bilkis Bano's gang-rape, and murder of her family members not a heinous enough crime?

Many people have been questioning the ground on which Nirbhaya's culprits have been given death sentence but not to Bilkis Bano's rapists. However, there are some others who opined that no two heinous crimes should be compared. Check the tweets questioning no death sentence for Bilkis Bano's rapists and leave your opinion in the comments below.