Police have a tough case at hand

The Delhi High Court on Thursday notified the names of six judges for the fast-track courts set up to conduct trials in rape cases in the national Capital, Harish V Nair reports.

It is premature for the police to believe they have an "open and shut" case vis-a-vis ensuring death sentence to all adult five accused in the Delhi bus gangrape case.

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"Since this is a gangrape case, prosecution is also required to prove individual brutality by all five accused to secure each of them a death sentence. They will also have to prove that each accused acted abnormally, brutally and was inhuman," says former Delhi High Court judge Justice R S Sodhi, who had sentenced Priyadarshini Matoo rape and murder convict Santosh Singh to death in 2007.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that death sentence can be given, if proved that the murder was committed after previous planning and involves extreme brutality and exceptional depravity to fall in the bracket of "rarest of rare" category.

"Statement of doctors and the postmortem reports will be crucial evidence to prove that the bus gangrape and murder case is rarest of rare brutality," says another former Delhi HC judge SN Dhingra.

The last rape and murder convict to be hanged in the country was Dhanajoy Chatterjee on August 14, 2004.