‘He laughed, said hangings will be delayed again’: Kin of Delhi gang-rape convict

The parents of other two gang-rape convicts also insisted that their children were innocent. Sharma’s mother and Gupta’s father objected to celebrations after the hangings.

When 68-year-old Rambai met her son, Mukesh Singh, inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail on Thursday and had tea with him, she hoped he and three other convicts in the December 16 Delhi gang-rape case would escape the gallows again. Singh told her not to trust the news about their hangings, which had been delayed since 2017 when the Supreme Court upheld death sentences against the four. The four exhausted all their legal remedies before they were executed on Friday.

Police personnel outside Tihar jail during the execution of four men convicted of Nirbhaya rape and murder case, in New Delhi. (PTI)

“Mukesh was laughing and smiling while we sat across a table. He told me the hangings would be delayed yet again. I believed him,” said Rambai, a widow.

Less than 24 hours later, Rambai was mourning on Friday afternoon in between drags of hookah at her dingy two-room set house in Ravi Dass Camp slum in New Delhi’s RK Puram area. Giving her company were her two women relatives.

The slum gained notoriety for being home to four of the six people, who were arrested for the rape.

Residents came out of their homes when bodies of two other convicts, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta, were brought to the neighbourhood a little after 2pm. Some wept silently. “I cry for Vinay’s parents. They are good people and do not deserve any boycott for the crimes of their son,” said a woman, who did not want to be identified.

Some men assisted Gupta’s father, Hira Lal, as he walked towards his son’s body. Others walked around aggressively to ensure no one was recording the funeral as scores of police and paramilitary personnel watched.

A little before 3pm, a few dozen people walked about three kilometres to a crematorium in Green Park to cremate Gupta and Sharma’s bodies.

Rambai, meanwhile, prepared to leave for her village in Rajasthan’s Karauli district. Singh’s body was directly driven there as was Akshay Thakur’s to his native place in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur.

“I will cremate him at my birthplace. I have lived in this slum for decades, but this is not my home,” said Rambai. She added she was not angry with the slum residents, who mostly kept away from him while she fought a seven-year battle to save her son from the gallows. “I sold my house and a plot of land in my native village to fight for my son. I would not live with the regret that I did not try to save him,” she said, insisting her son was framed. Her elder son, Ram Singh, an accused in the rape, was found dead in jail during the rape trial in March 2013.

The parents of Sharma and Gupta also insisted that their children were innocent. Sharma’s mother and Gupta’s father objected to celebrations after the hangings.

Hira Lal said his lawyer, AP Singh, did all he could to prevent the death sentence from being executed. He added he would continue to fight to get his son’s name cleared. “I will seek reopening and reinvestigation into the case,” said Hira Lal, acknowledging it would be a difficult.

For years, many residents of this slum had boycotted the families of the four. Residents, mostly younger ones, said they struggled to find jobs because of Ravi Dass Camp address on their resumes and that they felt ashamed to tell others where they lived.

Some residents said the hangings would not mean that the reputation of the neighbourhood would change anytime soon, but they hoped the slum’s name would not feature in media reports anymore.

“At least journalists would not repeatedly visit the slum,” said a young man, who works with a private firm. He added he gets off his office cab several hundred metres away so that his colleagues do not know where he lives.

As journalists began arriving at the slum ahead of the arrival of the bodies, the young man and his friends quickly covered their faces with handkerchiefs. They did not want to be identified as the residents of Sant Ravi Dass Camp.