Delhi gangrape: Nirbhaya’s parents seek justice, demand stay on juvenile release

The grounds which has been taken in the appeal against the High Court order says that no mental assessment of the state of mind of the juvenile offender has been taken into account for his release. The apex court has made a decision to hear the petition on Monday.

The youngest convict in the notorious 2012 Delhi gang rape case has been released from a correctional centre, his lawyer has told the BBC.

The Supreme Court today refused a midnight hearing on a petition filed by the Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Swati Maliwal against the scheduled release of the Nirbhaya gang-rape juvenile convict on Sunday. “Despite all our efforts, the criminal will get away with what he did”, her mother Asha Devi said. In its plea the woman panel has cited an IB report which points to the convict being “completely unremorseful and has been further radicalised by association with other juvenile convict in Special Home”.

“Since the case has been registered, the matter is sub-judice now and hence the Nirbhaya rapist should not be released on Sunday”, she said.

The juvenile convict in the December 16 gangrape was today released and sent to an NGO at an undisclosed destination with police no longer guarding him. He is to remain there for several weeks, as under the Act, there has to be a post-care plan for a juvenile who has been released.

They had earlier chose to hold the protest at the India Gate, but because of the imposition of Section 144 in the area, they were not allowed. The police action was condemned by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

The court was hearing a petition by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Subramanian Swamy demanding a longer sentence for the man, who was 17 at the time of the crime, after he had received the maximum punishment of three years from the Juvenile Justice Board.

In 2012, the man and five adult companions lured the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist and her male friend onto a bus in Delhi, where they repeatedly raped the woman and beat both with a metal bar before dumping them on to a road.