Execution of convicts will be 'real tribute' to her: Officer who headed Nirbhaya case SIT

The execution of the Nirbhaya case convicts will be a "real tribute" to her, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Pramod Singh Kushwaha, who headed the SIT which probed the 2012 case, said on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, a Delhi court issued death warrants against all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case and ordered that they be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail.

The death warrant, also known as black warrant, addressed to the office of the Tihar jail chief, was issued by Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora against Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

"This judgement will send a strong message to criminals and nobody will dare to commit such a crime in future," Kushwaha said.

All members of the special investigation team (SIT) did their best which resulted in consistent judgement by the court, he added. Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old paramedic student, was gangraped and brutalised on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by the four men, along with two others, before being dumped on the road.

She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. Of the six persons convicted, one allegedly committed suicide in jail and another, a juvenile, was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.