Accused conspired to rape, kill 16/12 gangrape victim: Police

The police today contended before the Delhi High Court that the accused in December 16 gangrape case had hatched a conspiracy to commit rape and kill the victim.
The court is hearing the final arguments on a day-to-day basis on the trial court's reference to it for confirmation of death sentence awarded to four convicts in the case.
Appearing for police, Special Public Prosecutor, Dayan Krishnan told the bench of justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani that "the series of malicious acts of the accused persons amount to conspiracy".
The lawyer argued that the claim of the accused before the trial court that they were not present at the time of incident was "false" and said that the 23-year-old girl and her male friend were lured to get inside the bus as they were made to believe that it was a public transport vehicle.

"The manner of commission, the way they had used the weapon against the victim, brutality and injuries and also the fact that the girl and her male friend were thrown out of the bus were sufficient to establish conspiracy in the case.
"There was also a clear intention to kill the girl.I wish English language has higher words to describe the injury above brutal and grotesque," the lawyer said and referred to the testimony of the prosecution witness who was robbed by the accused.

The prosecutor told the court that he would argue tomorrow on the trial court's sentence awarded to the convicts and conclude his arguments before the court's lunch break.

The bench in its order said that after the prosecutor concludes his argument, the defence counsel M L Sharma, for accused Mukesh and Pawan Gupta, will begin his arguments.
However, the proxy counsel, who appeared on behalf of Sharma, said that Sharma would be available for arguments on Tuesday only.
To this, the bench said, "If he will not argue the case, we will close it. He can move to Supreme Court against our order."
The trial court had on September 13 awarded death penalty to Mukesh, Vinay, Pawan Kumar Gupta and Akshay for raping the girl in a moving bus in south Delhi on the night of December 16, last year.