Nirbhaya verdict / Jan 22 a big day, hanging of convicts will empower women: Nirbhaya's mother

The mother of Delhi gang-rape victim has hailed the verdict given by a Delhi court, saying her daughter has finally got justice.

“My daughter has got justice. Execution of the four convicts will empower the women of the country. This decision will strengthen the trust of people in the judicial system,” the woman’s mother Asha Devi said after the verdict.

The trial court on Tuesday issued the black warrant to execute the four men who raped and tortured the 23-year-old physiotherapy student in 2012. The execution to be held on January 22, the court said in its order. It has given convicts time for 14 days to use legal remedies available to them.

“We will file curative petition in Supreme Court,” said the convicts’ lawyer AP Singh.

The trial court had completed the trial and delivered its guilty verdict within a year. But it was much later that the high court confirmed the death penalty. In 2017, the Supreme Court rejected the first set of appeals against the conviction.

Judge Satish Kumar Arora issued the warrant at the request of the police and the victim’s mother who had celebrated the top court’s 2017 verdict rejecting an appeal against the death sentence as “justice at last”.

The 23-year-old woman was gangraped and tortured on December 16, 2012, which led to her death. All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused committed suicide in Tihar Jail.

Four of the convicts - Akshay, Vinay, Pawan and Mukesh - were sentenced to death by a trial court in September 2013, and the verdict confirmed by the Delhi High Court in March 2014 and upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2017, which also dismissed their review petition in July 2018.