Photography

2012 Delhi gang rape and murder

The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved the gang rape and murder of a 22-year-old woman, Jyoti Singh, in a moving bus on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in Delhi, India. The assault took place when Jyoti, a physical therapy intern, was beaten, gang raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six other men in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and, as the public outrage mounted, the government had her transferred to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she died from her injuries two days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the Government of Delhi and the Government of India for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world. All the accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused, Ram Singh, died in police custody from possible suicide on 11 March 2013. According to some published reports and the police, Ram Singh hanged himself, but the defence lawyers and his family allege he was murdered. The rest of the accused went on trial in a fast-track court; the prosecution finished presenting its evidence on 8 July 2013. On 10 September 2013, the four adult defendants – Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Mukesh Singh (Ram Singh's brother) – were found guilty of rape and murder and three days later were sentenced to death. In the death reference case and hearing appeals on 13 March 2014, Delhi High Court upheld the guilty verdict and the death sentences. On 18 December 2019, the Supreme Court of India rejected the final appeals of the condemned perpetrators of the attack. The four adult convicts were executed by hanging on 20 March 2020.

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See also

• ▸High-speed photography
• ▸Crimean War
• ▸Catherine, Princess of Wales

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.