A COURT in the Indian capital, Delhi, has begun hearing arguments ahead of the sentencing of four men found guilty of the fatal gang rape of a student.
Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta face the death penalty after being convicted on Tuesday. They denied the charges and lawyers for three of the men said they would appeal against the convictions.
The woman, 23, was attacked on a bus in December and died two weeks later. Public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan told the judge on Wednesday that the "extreme brutality" of the crime had shocked the "collective conscience" and justified the death penalty for the guilty men.
"There can be nothing more diabolical... There is no element of sympathy in the way in which the hapless woman was tortured," he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency. On Tuesday, Judge Yogesh Khanna pronounced the four men "guilty of gang rape, unnatural offences, destruction of evidence... and for committing the murder of the helpless victim"
. Defence lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict and argued that the death penalty was not warranted. "In a case where there is a call for the death penalty, we will argue for an easing of the punishment," VK Anand, one of the lawyers, told the AFP news agency.
Lawyer Vivek Sharma said the judge could announce the sentence if the arguments ended on Wednesday. "If not, it could easily come the day after," he said. Lawyers for the four convicted men say that their clients have been tortured and that some of their confessions - later retracted - were coerced.
Correspondents say that torture is a common occurrence in India's chaotic criminal justice system. 'Larger issue' The victim's family and activists have welcomed Tuesday's verdict. However, the victim's mother told The Indian Express newspaper that "justice will be done in the true sense only if all of them [convicted men] are hanged".
Lawyer Rebecca John said that although the judgement "can be celebrated, total change is a much larger issue". "As we celebrate this case, let us mourn for the other cases that are not highlighted," she told the Associated Press news agency. The assailants were on an out-of-service bus when they tricked the woman and a male friend into boarding.
Police said the assailants beat both of them and then raped the woman. She died in a Singapore hospital on 29 December - 10 days after the attack - from internal injuries. The case sparked a national debate on the treatment of women.
Tough new laws were introduced in March which allowed the death penalty - carried out very rarely in India - to be handed down in the most serious cases of rape. On 31 August a teenager who was found guilty of taking part in the rape in Delhi was sentenced to three years in a reform facility, the maximum term possible because the crime was committed when he was 17.
He also denied all the charges. Another suspect, Ram Singh, was found dead in his cell in March. Prison officials said they believed he hanged himself but his family allege he was murdered.
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