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Executions Delayed for Two in India Gang Rape Case Executions Delayed for Two in India Gang Rape Case
(about 9 hours later)
NEW DELHI — India’s top court issued a temporary stay of execution on Saturday for two of the four men convicted of the gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. NEW DELHI — The Indian Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily stayed the executions of two of the four men sentenced to death in the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi in 2012, an attack that set off a public outcry and mass protests in India over violence against women in the country.
The Supreme Court’s order came in response to a petition filed by a lawyer for the two men that said the appeals court that confirmed the death sentence on Thursday had ignored their defense. The Supreme Court stayed the executions until March 31, when the court will hold a hearing on the case. If the court rejects their appeal and upholds the death sentences, the two men can still apply for a mercy petition directly from the president of India.
It was not clear when the execution, by hanging, had been scheduled to take place. A lower court convicted and sentenced the four men in September. A juvenile who was also convicted but is exempt from the death penalty was sentenced to a maximum term of three years in prison.
The court set a hearing in the case for March 31. On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court upheld the death sentences of all four men convicted in the case, citing the brutality of the crime.
A lawyer for the other two men, who also face the death penalty, said he would approach the court soon. Though many people, including the victim’s parents, called for the perpetrators to be hanged, some human rights advocates object to the death penalty on principle.
The attack unleashed a wave of public anger over the treatment of women in India and the epidemic of sexual violence in the country. Protests were held for months across India after the gang rape and after the woman’s death two weeks later. “I oppose the death penalty even in this case,” said Vrinda Grover, a women’s rights advocate and lawyer. “I do not see the death penalty as a solution against routine and systematic violence against women, including sexual violence.”
Last September, a lower court sentenced the men to death after determining that the case fell into the “rarest of the rare” category, which the Supreme Court has said is the only one that can merit capital punishment.
The men were charged with murder after the woman, a 23-year-old student who has not been publicly identified, died from severe injuries sustained when she was raped with an iron rod.