Hundreds of people, carrying the national flag and shouting slogans of 'long live Nirbhaya' and 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', gathered outside the Tihar Jail in the early hours of Friday, 20 March. The crowd also distributed sweets after four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case were executed.
Security was beefed up outside Tihar’s Jail Number 3, where the four convicts - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) - were hanged at 5.30 am.
Seen among those gathered outside the jail was social activist Yogita Bhayana. She held a poster which read 'Nirbhaya has got justice. The other daughters still await'.
"Justice has been delivered finally," she said, adding it was a victory of the legal system.
The horrific gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern on 16 December, 2012, who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya, the fearless one, had seared the nation's soul and triggered countrywide outrage.
Akash Deep, who has been associated with her family, said he was there to witness the victory of a long-fought legal battle that continued for over seven years.
"It was a tough fight. However, the justice was won today," he said.
Divya Dhawan, who came from Subhash Nagar, said, "The decision is good but that could have been better if the justice was delivered earlier on time."
Sana, a resident of west Delhi, said, "Nothing will change after this hanging in our society, but we are happy that the four convicts have been hanged and the justice was delivered to Nirbhaya."
This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.
The executions were carried out after the four accused exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for 22 January.
In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging.
In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea.
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