Seven years and many hearing and adjournment later the four rapists of Nirbhaya were hanged at early morning at Tihar jail bringing down the curtain on a drama which had been played out in the courts for past four years.
In a midnight drama, the convicts had also petitioned the Delhi High Court, where their lawyer cited coronavirus for the lack of proper documents along with the hurriedly-filed appeal. A third court had already declared that they had run out of all legal options of stopping their execution. At 2:30 a.m their plea was rejected.
Akshay Thakur, 31, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, andMukesh Singh, 32, were hanged at Delhi's Tihar Jail, where they spent the lastfew hours in isolation and separate cells, barely eating. For the first time inthe history of India, four convicts were hanged at the same time.
They refused to eat and were up much of the night, said officials. The entire jail was on lockdown since last night, and officials said, few other prisoners in Asia's largest prison facility could sleep a wink ahead of the first execution since 2015.
The convicts were woken at 3.30 am, around the time they learned they had reached the end of the road in courts. The bodies were to hand over to the families.
Several "dummy executions" had been carried out bythe hangman, Pawan Jallad, as petitions stalled the execution repeatedly.
"We all have waited so long for this day. Today is a new dawn for daughters of India. The beasts have been hanged," said Asha Devi, the mother of "Nirbhaya". After the hanging, she went home and hugged her daughter's photo.
