Four men were hanged Friday, more than seven years after a gang-rape and murder that stunned India. Here are the facts surrounding the crime.
What happened
Jyoti Singh, 23, was returning home from the cinema with a male friend when they boarded a private bus on the evening of Sunday December 16, 2012.
Six assailants knocked out the male friend and dragged Singh to the back of the vehicle where they raped and assaulted her with a metal rod.
After an ordeal lasting more than an hour, she and the friend were dumped for dead.
Singh survived long enough to identify her attackers but died a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.
She was dubbed “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”) by the Indian media.
Investigation
Police tracked down the driver of the bus and arrested him and three others on December 18. The remaining two were arrested within a week.
The five adults and one juvenile were charged with 13 offences in February 2013 by a fast-track court.
Four men who were convicted of the 2012 rape and murder of a woman in a bus in New Delhi, India, have been hanged to death today. Hundreds of policemen were reportedly deployed to control the crowds celebrating the execution outside the jail premises. pic.twitter.com/MgHknvtAl9
— BFM News (@NewsBFM) March 20, 2020
A month later, the main accused Ram Singh was found dead in his prison cell. Officials said he killed himself, but his family and lawyer alleged he was murdered.
That August, the juvenile was found guilty of rape and murder and sentenced to three years in a correctional facility.
The four remaining adults were found guilty and sentenced to death the following month in a fast-track court.
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But it took more than six more years until they were hanged after a series of legal appeals.
Victim and rapists
Singh was studying physiotherapy and worked at a call centre. Her family had moved from a rural area and her father earned around $100 a month as an airport baggage handler.
The men on the bus — Ram Singh, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta — did menial jobs and lived in a slum in south Delhi.