Earlier today, after postponing it for umpteen number of times, the Tihar Jail held the execution of four men who were sentenced to death for the horrific Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case. While the country celebrated ‘justice’, people were quick enough to point out the fact that one of the accused is still roaming free in the country.
On 16th December 2012, a young woman, later to be known as ‘Nirbhaya’, was gang-raped by six men inside a bus, tortured her further with an iron rod and was thrown out of the bus along with her friend. Battling for life, she died in one of the hospitals in Singapore on the 29th of December. Out of the six accused, four of them – Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, and Akshay Kumar Singh – were hanged to death, the fifth accused Ram Singh committed suicide in his cell. The sixth accused, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was sent to remand room.
Despite public pressure to try the juvenile as an adult considering the brutality of the crime, the court refused to budge and sent him to remand room.
Where is he now?
The juvenile goes by the name Mohammad Afroz hailed from a village 200 kilometers away from the National Capital. Leaving home at the age of 11 and joined Ram Singh, the fifth convict who killed himself, as a cleaner for his bus.
Reports speculate that among all of them, the juvenile was the most brutal one. The reports also claim that it was he who went ahead and attack Nirbhaya with an iron rod. The public, at the time, tried to put immense pressure on the courts to try him as an adult in the case but the Juvenile Justice Board brushed aside everything and sent Afroz to a remand home for three years in North Delhi’s Majnu Ka Tila.
According to a report that came a few years ago, it is believed that the juvenile is leading a new life in the southern part of India. After learning how to cook in the remand home, he now works as a cook in South India under another name. Reports also claim that his employer doesn’t know about his past. The NGO that monitors him makes sure that he is shifted from a place periodically to hide his past from his employers.
While ‘justice is served’ tweets bombarded twitter, the people refuse to forget about the sixth convict and feel that absolute justice continues to be denied and called for his hanging too.
