Delhi gang rape: All 4 accused found GUILTY

A fast track court in Delhi on Tuesday found all the four accused guilty in the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl in a moving bus in New Delhi in December last year.

The judge will decide on the quantum of punishment on Wednesday, when the four men will be sentenced.

The verdict in the incident, which had evoked nationwide outrage and consequent amendments to the anti-rape laws, follows a trial, which was concluded in 130 hearings and was extensively covered by the media.

The decision comes almost ten days after the juvenile accomplice was sentenced to three-year term at a detention centre after being held guilty by the Juvenile Justice Board of gang rape and murder of the paramedic and robbing a carpenter before the incident of gang-rape in the same bus.

The trial in the robbery case against the four is progressing in another court.

While the victim's male friend did not attend to repeated phone calls, his counsel D K Mishra said, "He wants to move ahead".

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The victim's parents, who were not satisfied with the sentence given to the juvenile, have said, "Nothing less than death to the four adult accused can do justice to our deceased daughter."

The paramedic's brother, however, accepts that the law provides not more than three years' punishment to a juvenile' but adds that the four co-accused should get the death penalty.

Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna had on September 3 reserved his order for Tuesday after the prosecution and the accused concluded their arguments.

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During the trial, accused Mukesh admitted his presence in the bus while the other three accused -- Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta -- denied the charges levelled against them.

Prime accused and bus driver Ram Singh was found dead in his cell in Tihar jail on March 11, over a month after the beginning of the proceedings.

Special Public Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan had, however, junked their claims and pressed the prosecution's version -- that the accused were out on the road on the night of December 16 in pursuance of a plan and targeted the victims, including the girl -- in their "quest for sexual satisfaction and loot" and they committed a crime which was "grotesque to say the least".

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