Supreme Court upholds death penalty for Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder convicts

With this verdict, all four convicts are to be hanged.

“It’s a tsunami of shock in the minds of the collective and destroyed humanity. Death for all four. Compelled to arrive aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances," the three-judge bench ruled.

The convicts had been awarded death sentence by the fast track court, which was upheld by the Delhi High Court.

The execution was stayed after the four convicts — Mukesh (27), Pawan (20), Vinay (21) and Akshay (29) — moved the top court.

The fifth accused, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide while in jail. The sixth accused, who was a minor at the time of crime, was granted three years in a correction facility by Juvenile Justice Board. He was released from the home in November 2015.

The brutal crime committed on December 16, 2013 against the girl, dubbed Nirbhaya by media, had created public furore for a more stringent law against sexual assault of women.

Jyoti Singh, who was accompanied by a male friend, was  brutally gang-raped by six persons and tortured to the extent that her intestine was pulled out.

She and her friend were  then thrown out of the bus. .

She died days later in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.