India adjourns hearing of gang rape case

A hearing to confirm the death sentence given to four men convicted of raping and murdering a woman last year has been adjourned in India, judicial sources say.

New Delhi’s High Court said the hearing of arguments would begin from Wednesday.

The four were sentenced to death earlier this month. A fifth defendant hanged himself in his cell back in March. A juvenile also tried in the case has already been given three years in a correctional facility.

The victim™s family and protesters say the juvenile should have been given a harsher sentence. They have called on the court to try the teenager as an adult, alongside other men initially arrested and put on trial following the assault.

œHe committed the worst crime and even if he is a minor, the accused should not be allowed to walk free after three years,” the victim™s father said in early August.

The developments come after a 23-year-old medical student was gang-raped on a moving bus in the capital, Delhi in December 2012. The woman and her male companion were brutally assaulted and she later died in hospital from her injuries.

The brutality of the crime sparked nationwide protests and forced the government to overhaul the law on women’s safety.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one woman is raped every 20 minutes in the world™s second most populous country.

JR/PR