NEW DELHI, Jan 29, (Agencies): Scores of protesters gathered near India’s Parliament on Tuesday demanding the death penalty for six men accused in the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi last month.
The protesters carried placards saying, “Give us Justice, Hang the Rapists,” and shouted slogans before conducting a mock hanging of the men who are facing trial in a special court in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a petition to move the trial out of New Delhi. The petition, filed by a Delhi-based lawyer, argued that the men would not get a fair trial because of the charged atmosphere in the capital following the rape and subsequent death of the woman. The court declared the petition void because the lawyer who filed it was no longer representing one of the defendants.
Meanwhile, the father of an Indian student who died after being gang-raped on a bus has called for changes in the law to allow a teenage suspect to be tried as an adult, local media reported on Tuesday. The father of the 23-year-old victim said he was shocked that a court ruled that the sixth suspect in the deadly gang-rape case would be tried as a juvenile, facing a maximum prison term of three years if convicted.
“I want to ask the lawmakers if an exception shouldn’t be made in this case,” the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was quoted as saying in the Hindu newspaper.
“We want to be reassured by the government that my rights to justice is protected. In this case the accused is hiding behind legal loopholes in the system,” he added.
The victim’s family has been among those calling for the juvenile to be tried alongside the five other accused, who face the possibility of being hanged if found guilty of rape and murder charges.
But the Delhi-based Juvenile Justice Board on Monday accepted the school records of the teenage suspect, which states that he was born on June 4, 1995, making him 17.
“The news came in as the family sat down to have its evening meal. Nobody has eaten since then,” the father said from the family’s modest one-room accommodation in east Delhi.
Meanwhile, verdicts for five men accused of the fatal gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus would be handed down “very soon,” a defence lawyer said Tuesday, as an application to relocate the trial failed.
Lawyer V.K. Anand said proceedings in the special “fast-track” sessions court which is hearing the case were advancing at pace as he took part in an online chat on the website of Indian news channel CNN-IBN.
“At this speed I expect a verdict very soon,” wrote Anand, who represents two defendants. “(But) it would certainly take more than a month as scrutiny of evidence and witnesses would take time.”
A petition to move the trial out of the capital, where there is a clamour for quick verdicts and the death penalty, was turned down by the Supreme Court Tuesday because it was lodged by a lawyer who is no longer working on the case.
A lawyer for two defendants accused of the fatal gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus said Tuesday he would file a petition challenging an order preventing the media from reporting on the trial.
The case is being held behind closed doors in a new “fast-track” court in the south of the city where the judge has imposed the gagging order and warned lawyers who speak to the media that they could be guilty of contempt.
“I will be filing a petition for an open trial in the High Court this week,” lawyer V.K Anand, who is acting for brothers Mukesh and Ram Singh, told AFP by telephone.