WHY WE HAVE ALL FAILED NIRBHAYA

LAST YEAR, ON DECEMBER 6, scores of Indians celebrated the news that the Telangana police had gunned down the four men accused of gangraping and murdering a young veterinarian on the outskirts of Hyderabad on November 27 while they were allegedly trying to flee. What in legal parlance can be described as custodial death brought kudos for the police on social media. For many, the blood lust was understandable—it was the response of a nation frustrated with a slow and inefficient criminal justice system and desperate for ‘quick-fix justice’, even if it meant a questionable police encounter.

It has been seven years since another young woman was gangraped and fatally brutalised on our streets. Nirbhaya, as the 23-year-old physiotherapy graduate came to be known, was assaulted by a gang of six—one of them a juvenile—inside a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, in Delhi. The savagery of the assault, which led to her death 13 days later, sparked a nationwide outpouring of rage and spontaneous street protests, forcing the government of the day to amend, within three months, India’s laws related to sexual offences. A fast-track court convicted the accused in less than nine months and sentenced the four surviving adult convicts to death—a fifth one was found dead in his jail cell under mysterious circumstances. However, lengthy procedures in the higher courts have delayed the executions.

Now, finally, the executions, as scheduled on February 1, give the country another opportunity to celebrate the system of retributive justice. Many, who in principle oppose