MUMBAI, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The Delhi High Court Thursday confirmed death sentence for four men convicted by a trial court of the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student in December, 2012, local media reported. A division bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani pronounced the verdict on Thursday afternoon.
The four defendants, Mukesh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan and Akshay Thakur were given the capital punishment by the lower court in Sept. 13 last year for the gang-rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a moving bus. The young woman died of injuries nearly a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.
The court had said that the crime, which stirred widespread protests over sexual crimes against women in the country, fell into the judicial system's "rarest of rare category" that allows capital punishment. The appeal by the accused for commutation of their sentences has also been dismissed by the court.The defense lawyer for the accused said the Delhi High Court order will now be challenged in the Supreme Court.
The convicts are being held at the capital's high-security Tihar Jail. The fifth suspect in the case, bus driver Ram Singh, died in prison in March last year in an apparent suicide.
A sixth member of the group, who was a minor at the time of the assault, was sentenced to three years in a reformatory, the maximum penalty allowed under the country's juvenile laws.
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