Indian court powerless to extend sentence of released Delhi gang rape convict
The youngest of six men convicted of the 2012 gang rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi was released after three years in custody, adding to outrage sparked by the brutal attack
India’s Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal against the release of the youngest convict in an infamous fatal gang-rape, sparking fury from the victim’s parents who said the ruling was a betrayal.
Amid growing outrage at the freeing of the 20-year-old, judges said there were no legal grounds to allow a petition by the Delhi Commission for Women, which wanted to reverse his release from a youth correctional facility.
At a hearing presided over by Justice A. K. Goel and U. U. Lalit, the court said “there is nothing in the law” that would allow them to order him back behind bars and he therefore could not be detained any longer.
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“We asked for an interim order restraining his release but the court did not entertain this,” said the women’s commission chairwoman Swati Maliwal.
“The entire system has failed the women of this country,” she told reporters outside the court.
The ruling was greeted with despair by the parents of the victim, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh who has become the symbol of the plight of women in a country with frightening levels of sexual violence.
“What can I say? There are no words to describe our disappointment,” her father Badrinath Singh said. “We don’t understand all these laws. We only know that the system has failed us.”