December 16 gangrape: HC reserves verdict on appeals

The Delhi High Court today reserved its verdict on the appeals filed by four death row convicts in the December 16 gangrape case.
A bench of justices Reva Khetrapal and Pratibha Rani reserved its judgement after marathon hearing spanning over three-and-a-half months, in which both the police and the four convicts concluded their arguments on the appeals.
The court has also concluded arguments and reserved its order on the reference sent to it by the trial court, which has sentenced four convicts -- Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh - to death on September 13, 2013 for confirmation of the capital punishment.

It is mandatory for the trial court to refer a death penalty case to the high court for confirmation of sentence within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict.
Before reserving the verdict, the bench has examined the iron rods, which was allegedly used by the convicts during the commission of the crime on the night of the incident and also the victims clothes pieces.
It examined the CCTV footage of the bus, in which the 23-year-old girl was assaulted by six persons. The bench further examined the video clippings of Vinay's mobile phone.

During the trial, Vinay had claimed that his mobile phone had a video clip through which he can established that he was not in the bus during the crime and was present at a music function in south Delhi.

However, Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna rejected their claim of innocence and had held the four guilty on 13 counts including murder and gangrape of the girl.
They were given death sentence by the trial court which had said the "beastly" and "hair-raising" manner in which the crime was committed against the girl falls in the rarest of rare category.