United Nations urges to halt 'capital punishment' after Nirbhaya convicts' execution

The United Nations called on all countries to put an end to the use of capital punishment, a day after the convicts in the 2012 Delhi Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case were executed in Tihar jail. Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 AM on March 20 for the brutal assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old.

In response to the execution of Nirbhaya's convicts, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' spokesperson  Stephane Dujarric said the world organisation said, "Our position has been clear, is that we call on all States to halt the use of capital punishment or at least put a moratorium on this," Dujarric said at the daily press briefing on Friday.

After the finality of the Nirbhaya rape case occurred with all four convicts hanged to death, the International Commission of Jurists, called it an affront to rule of law and does not improve access to justice for women. It has also denounced executions and asked India to abolish the death penalty. 

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South Asia's biggest prison complex, Tihar jail houses over 16,000 inmates. The hanging was carried out as per schedule on Friday morning after a three-judge Supreme Court bench rejected the final plea by the convicts' lawyer AP Singh to stay their execution in a late-night hearing. On Friday, hundreds of people gathered outside Tihar jail, holding placards and banners and raising slogans in support of the hanging of the convicts.

Security outside the jail had been tightened. The victim's parents -- mother Asha Devi and father Badrinath Singh -- hailed the hanging saying that their daughter had finally got the justice, over seven years after she was brutalised in a moving bus in the national capital. The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22. The execution of the four convicts brings the curtains down on the case that shook not just India but also the world with the details of its brutality The widespread protests subsequently paved the way for a change in India's rape laws.

Nirbhaya case

The four convicts, along with two others including Ram Singh and a juvenile, had raped and brutally tortured a 23-year-old paramedic student on a moving bus in south Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012. The victim died a few days later after battling for life at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital and later at a Singapore hospital. The case had created an uproar across the country, especially in Delhi where a large number of people came out on the streets, demanding justice for the victim, who was renamed as 'Nirbhaya' or the fearless.  

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