Our wait for justice was painful and agonising but we finally got it, Asha Devi, the mother of Nirbhaya said minutes after four of her daughter’s rapists and killers were hanged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail this morning, over seven years after the young medical student was gang-raped and tortured on a moving bus in the capital.
“We will continue our fight for justice for India’s daughters. Our wait for justice was painful and agonising. We finally got justice,” she told reporters.
“I hugged my daughter’s photo,” Asha Devi said. “The beasts have been hanged.”
Akshay Thakur, 31, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, and Mukesh Singh, 32, were hanged at Tihar Jail, where they had spent the last few hours in isolation.
“I want to thank everyone, judiciary, government for this. The courts proactively dismissed all petitions. The country was ashamed in 2012,” Asha Devi said.
Less than two hours before the hanging, the Supreme Court, in a hearing past midnight, dismissed final petition of the convicts, bringing to an end a case that changed a nation.
The four men refused to eat and were up all night, said officials. The entire jail was on lockdown through the night, and officials said, no other prisoner in Asia’s largest jail could sleep a wink.
The convicts were taken out of their cells at 3:30 am.
The four filed multiple petitions over the past few months, managing to stall their execution thrice at the eleventh hour. “Send them to the India-Pakistan border, send them to Doklam, but don’t hang them,” pleaded the lawyer of one of the convicts Akshay Thakur.
“We all have waited so long for this day. Today’s dawn will be a new dawn as my daughter will get justice. It will also be a new dawn for daughters of India,” said Asha Devi. “My daughter’s soul will be at peace.”
