Nirbhaya case: It’s murder, injuries meant to kill, court says

NEW DELHI: Convicting the four accused for murder in the Nirbhaya case on Tuesday, the fasttrack court observed that the internal injuries caused by the accused were an "intended act don e with the sole intention of causing death." Hence they were clearly indicted for murder. "The accused persons adopted a unique modus operandi to do the acts," said additional sessions judge Yogesh Khanna. "They, besides causing external injuries, inserted rods in the abdomen of the victim. They did the act repeatedly and pulled out vital internal organs even with their hands. All these circumstances made the act of the accused an intended act done with sole intention of causing death." In fact, the nationwide outrage over the gang rape had been heightened by the sheer brutality of the act which had left Nirbhaya hanging between life and death with the entire country praying for her life. Brushing aside the claim of the defence that her death was caused by the negligence of doctors and delay in treatment and not by the act of the accused, the court said the circumstances "rule out the possibility of use of rods to overpower the girl. The acts of inserting rods and pulling out internal organs and committing the gang rape can in no manner be seen as acts done only to facilitate gang rape. Rather, the act of pulling out the internal organs of the victim to kill her was intentional." Convicting the accused for murder, the court said "it stands proved that the girl died due to the injuries inflicted by the accused while committing various offences with the victims inside the moving bus on the fateful night of December 16, 2012. Such injuries have been described by the doctors as dangerous , extremely bad for definite repair (and) sufficient in ordinary course to cause death." The court also referred to Nirbhaya's dying declaration in which she had described how she was beaten up by the accused with rods, which were also inserted in her body, and held that "the accused persons did the acts only with the intention of causing death." The judge noted that the girl was of a lean and thin physique and that after she boarded the bus with her friend, the accused did not allow any other person to board it. "The nature of these acts suggest that none of the acts were impulsive and rather the manner in which these acts were done clearly establishes the acts as being premeditated acts," it said, adding that the victim's death was a direct consequence of multiple internal injuries. Calling the rod a "deadly weapon", the court said, "The iron rods of such size, having a curve at one end and abrasions on the other, that were inserted into the private parts of the prosecutrix, would not be considered less than a deadly weapon for the manner in which such rods were used." TOI