NEW DELHI — An Indian juvenile court Saturday handed down the first conviction in the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus, convicting a teenager of rape and murder and sentencing him to three years in a reform home, lawyers said.
The victim’s parents denounced the sentence, which was the maximum the defendant faced. The family had long insisted the teen, who was 17 at the time of the December attack and is now 18, be tried as an adult — and thus face the death penalty.
“He should be hanged irrespective of whether he is a juvenile or not. He should be punished for what he did to my daughter,” the victim’s mother, Asha Devi, said after the verdict was announced.
Indian law forbids the publication of the teen’s name because he was sentenced in a juvenile court.
The attack, which left the 23-year-old victim with such extensive internal injuries that she died two weeks later, sparked protests across the country and led to reforms of India’s sexual-violence laws. The government, facing immense public pressure, had promised swift justice in the case.
The convicted teen was one of six people accused of tricking the woman and her male companion into boarding an off-duty bus Dec. 16 after they had seen an afternoon showing of “Life of Pi” at an upscale shopping mall.
Police say the men raped the woman and used a metal bar to inflict massive internal injuries to her. They also beat her companion. The victims were dumped naked on the roadside, and the woman later died from her injuries in a Singapore hospital.
A lawyer for the victim’s family said they would challenge the juvenile court’s verdict in a higher court.
