Dec 16 gangrape: All four accused convicted, sentence later

Dispensing justice in less than nine months, a fast track court today held guilty all the four accused in the December 16 gangrape and convicted them of rape and "cold blooded" murder of a "defenceless" 23-year-old girl in a premeditated manner, which may fetch them death.
Holding Mukesh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur guilty on the basis of both traditional method and scientific evidence like DNA profiling, the fast track court headed by Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna convicted them on 13 counts.
The quantum of punishment will be decided later by the court which will hear arguments on sentence tomorrow.

The 237-page judgement, which came six days short of nine months of the incident that shook the nation's conscience, also found complicity of Ram Singh, who was found dead in Tihar jail during the trial.
During the brief proceedings, the judge observed that even though proceedings against Ram Singh (34) were abated on his death, "he is also convicted under same sections (gangrape, murder and other offences)." However, this does not form part of the judgement.
Besides gangrape, murder and conspiracy, the court held Mukesh (26), Vinay Sharma (20), Pawan Gupta (19) and Akshay Thakur (28) guilty of attempt to murder, unnatural offences, dacoity, destruction of evidence, kidnapping or abducting in order to murder, while acquitting them of the charge of murder in dacoity.

The court also convicted them for kidnapping or abducting with intent to secretly and wrongfully confining a person, abducting to subject a person to grievous hurt and slavery, abducting woman to cause her defilement, voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery and dishonestly receiving property stolen in the commission of a dacoity.
"The facts of the case make all accused liable for the cold blooded murder of the defenceless prosecutrix and thus the offence under Section 302 (murder) read with Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC stands proved and the accused persons are thus convicted," the court said.