The Punjab and Haryana High Court had in March confirmed the death sentence awarded to the seven by a Rohtak court in 2015 for the gangrape and murder of the 28-year-old Nepali woman.The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the death sentence handed out to seven persons convicted for the brutal gangrape and murder of a “mentally unwell” Nepali woman in Haryana’s Rohtak in 2015.
“Leave granted. The execution of death sentence is stayed,” ordered a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta while deciding to hear their plea against the conviction.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court had in March confirmed the death sentence awarded to the seven by a Rohtak court in 2015 for the gangrape and murder of the 28-year-old Nepali woman and enhanced the fine imposed on them from Rs 50,000 each to a total of Rs 50 lakh. It observed that despite stern laws, the “deterrence in the matter of sentences including the death sentence is not satisfactory”.
The High Court said it was “shocked” and “aghast” at the “number and nature of injuries caused to the victim, who was mentally unwell” and had been brought to Rohtak from Nepal so she could be looked after by her relatives. The court termed it a “barbaric crime” and defined the acts of the perpetrators as “brutal and predatory”.
The woman had come to her sister’s place in Rohtak for treatment and had gone missing from her home in February 2015. Her mutilated body was recovered few days later from near a village.
According to the prosecution, the convicts had also attacked the woman’s private parts with bricks.
