‘No justice until rapists are hanged’

NEW DELHI: The family of a young woman, who was raped 10 months before Nirbhaya, is yet to come to terms with the loss of their daughter.
Sitting in their one-bedroom house tucked away in a southwest Delhi village, the family recalled the events of that fateful day. “Her father was in Agra that day. When she didn’t see him in the morning before going to work, she asked about him.She wanted him to return soon. She even spoke to him later in the day and said she would return in 10-15 minutes. Our lives stopped in those minutes,” said the mother, with tears welling up.
The decomposed and mutilated body of the 19-year-old was found three days later in a Haryana village on February 9, 2012.
The rape and murder of the woman had outraged the entire village, and they had ganged up against the accused who were also from there. All of them—Rahul, Ravi and Vinod—were arrested, booked and put on trial.
Anita Gupta, who runs a local NGO, had helped the family to fight the case and get compensation. She said the houses of all the accused were burnt down by the villagers.
The accused were eventually convicted and awarded death penalty. The conviction was upheld by the Delhi high court. “When I saw the case file, I wondered if these men were humans. I wanted these men to be hanged without trial. But as a legal practitioner, I had to keep my cool and go by the book,” said public prosecutor Satwinder Kaur Baweja.
The victim’s family said they would think justice has been delivered only when the rapists are hanged.