Verdict on Juvenile in Delhi Gang Rape Deferred Again

Money Sharma/European Pressphoto Agency Policemen in plain clothes escorting the juvenile accused, center with face covered, after the court hearing in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHIâ€" The Juvenile Justice Board on Thursday yet again deferred its verdict for the youngest of the six defendants in the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in New Delhi in December. A judgment is now expected on Aug. 5, according to the court officials.

The board, led by the principal magistrate Geetanjali Goel, had earlier this month delayed its decision on the charges against the accused, who cannot be named because he was 17 at the time of the crime. He turned 18 last month.

Rajesh Tiwari, the lawyer for the defendant, said the decision was delayed because of a pending appeal in the Supreme Court that seeks a consideration of the “mental and intellectual maturity” of the young man, and not just his age, while deciding his punishment. Subramanian Swamy, president of the Janata Party, had filed the petition, which is expected to be heard in the country’s highest court on July 31.

This rape case has initiated a debate in India over whether to lower the age of adult criminal responsibility to 16. The law currently defines an individual below the age of 18 as a juvenile offender, who can face a maximum sentence of three years in a detention facility.

“We will challenge the plea. It is against the interest of the accused,” Mr. Tiwari said Thursday afternoon after the board announced it had adjourned.

“Why is this being treated as a special case?” he asked. “All the cases against juvenile offenders across India should be treated the same way.”

In anticipation of the first verdict in the Delhi gang rape case, a horde of local and international journalists began milling outside the courtroom in the morning. But the police officers barred the journalists from entering the additional magistrate’s courtroom.

Three blue police vans stood outside the board complex in central Delhi, one of which had ferried the young defendant from a juvenile facility in north Delhi for the hearing.

A Delhi police constable, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that 10 police constables accompanied the accused in the van. He said the man did not talk much during the commute, “except when we started, I asked him about the missing piece of cloth that he would need to cover his face from the media gaze.” The accused had forgotten it in his cell and asked the constable to get it for him.

There were 30 juvenile offenders lodged in the facility within the compound in Central Delhi, said D.D. Singh one of the constables. In addition, eight of them including the accused had been brought in Thursday morning from different juvenile homes for hearing of their respective cases.

The family of the victim, who is referred to as Nirbhaya (“fearless”) by the Indian press to conceal her identity as required by Indian law, was present at the courtroom. Her younger brother, Gaurav Singh, told India Ink that “the accused should be hanged or imprisoned for life.”

He said that “Delays do not matter, but the final judgment should be good.”

None of the family members of the accused made it to the hearing. Long before his lawyer came out of the courtroom, the young man had been whisked away, carefully avoiding the media glare, and transported back into a blue police van to take him to the juvenile home where he was staying.

The youngest defendant had moved from a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to Delhi at the age of 11 and worked as a helper on the private bus, which Nirbhaya and her male friend had boarded after watching the movie “Life of Pi” at a south Delhi theater on Dec. 16.

The woman was stripped and raped on the moving bus, attacked repeatedly with iron rods and then thrown onto a highway, along with her friend, who survived. She was treated at hospitals in India and Singapore but died from her injuries on Dec. 29.

The rape galvanized streets protests in the national capital and across India that called for improved safety measures for women. Responding to the public outrage, the government toughened laws on sexual violence against women that criminalize stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks and allow for the death penalty in cases where a victim is left in a vegetative state after an attack.

Ram Singh, the driver of bus in which the assault occurred, was found hanging in his cell at Tihar Jail in Delhi in March. Four other men are facing a trial before a fast-track court on 13 charges, including gang rape, murder and robbery.