Saying their crime shocked the conscience of India, the prosecutor in the fatal New Delhi gang rape called Wednesday for all four convicted rapists to be hanged, while one of the defendants shouted out his innocence as police drove him into the courthouse.
It was not clear which of the four men was shouting, because his face was obscured behind the police van’s heavy metal mesh, but he repeatedly called out, “I am innocent! I am innocent!” as the van drove past a scrum of reporters.
The men were convicted Tuesday in the December gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a moving New Delhi bus, a brutal crime that unleashed a wave of public anger over the treatment of Indian women and a long-unspoken epidemic of sexual violence. The victim died two weeks after the attack.
The four face either life imprisonment or death by hanging. Calls for the men to be executed have grown increasingly loud, with everyone from the victim’s parents to top political leaders demanding the men be put to death.
Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said the attack shocked India’s “collective conscience,” noting the police report showed the men savagely attacked her with an iron rod, causing severe internal injuries that led to her death.
“There can be nothing more diabolic than a helpless girl put through torture,” he said.
Judge Yogesh Khanna said he would hand down the sentences on Friday.
The four men sat in in the back of the tiny courtroom in T-shirts or short-sleeved polo shirts, unshackled and with policemen holding them from both sides. They appeared impassive, though it was not clear how much they understood of the proceedings. Most of the day’s arguments were in English, a language that only one of the men, Vinay Sharma, is able to speak. They had no translator.
The defense lawyers have long proclaimed their clients’ innocence, while sometimes indicating some of the men may have been on the bus. They insist that any confessions were coerced by police torture.
On Wednesday, they called for the judge to avoid the death penalty.
“If they have committed a mistake, and the court accepted that they committed a mistake, then they should be given a chance to reform,” lawyer A.P. Singh, who has worked with all the defendants at various times, said outside the courthouse. “The accused are not habitual and professional criminals. They should be given one chance to reform themselves.”
Vivek Sharma, a lawyer representing Pawan Gupta, a 19-year-old fruit vendor, asked for a sentence of life imprisonment, noting that Indian law calls for execution only in very exceptional cases.
Sharma said Wednesday the crime may have happened “on the spur of the moment” and urged leniency for his client because of his age and because he had to support his impoverished family. He said Gupta did not join in the rape or in violating the victim with the rod.
The family of the victim watched from one row in front of the prisoners, close enough to touch one another.
When the hearing ended, they again called for the men to be hanged.
“They finished our daughter,” said the father, who cannot be named under Indian laws guarding his daughter’s identity as a rape victim. “We want them finished.”
In addition to their confessions, the four convicted rapists were identified by the woman’s male friend who was with her on the night of the attack. The two were coming home from a movie when the men tricked them into boarding a bus they were joy-riding. They quickly beat the friend into submission, held the woman down and took turns raping her.
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