International shooter Vartika Singh has written a letter in blood to Union Home Minister Amit Shah, requesting the Centre to let her hang the rapists convicted in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case who are facing a death sentence.
Speaking to reporters in Lucknow, Singh said, “I have a letter in my hand that is written to Union Home Minister Amit Shah. I have written the letter with my blood. I have written that I should be allowed to execute the convicts in the Nirbhaya case. This will reinforce the concept that women are viewed as goddesses in India.”
She added, “This message should go to the entire world. The rapists should know that in India, a woman can execute them. I have sent the letter through registered post and also tweeted it.”
She further said that she wanted support for her initiative from women actors, lawmakers and other celebrities.
Reports of the imminent hanging of the four men convicted in the infamous Nirbhaya rape and murder case have been gaining grounds as the convicts are running out of legal options.
The Tihar Jail officials, where the four are presently lodged, have asked the Buxar Jail in Bihar to prepare ropes for the hanging and the Uttar Pradesh government has been asked to provide hangmen.
The Buxar Jjail has expertise in making ropes suitable for hanging while Uttar Pradesh has a ‘certified’ hangman Pawan in Meerut.
Vartika Singh had made news a few months ago when Babri plaintiff Iqbal Ansari had accused her of heckling him to concede the then disputed land to Hindus. She had accused him of attempting to assault her.
Besides Singh, 42-year-old Tamil police Head Constable S Subash Srinivasan, a police gallantry medal winner and grandson of INA veteran, has also volunteered to hang the killers of Nirbhaya in Tihar Jail. Srinivasan has also written a letter to the Tihar Jail authorities on December 6.
The 23-year-old woman was brutally gangraped and tortured on December 16, 2012 in a moving bus which led to her death. All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused committed suicide in Tihar Jail.
Four of the convicts were sentenced to death by a trial court in September 2013, and the verdict was confirmed by the Delhi High Court in March 2014 and upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2017, which also dismissed their review petition in July 2018.
The execution of the Nirbhaya convicts could now happen any time as the Centre, Delhi government and the 2012 gangrape and murder victim’s parents have moved the President’s office seeking rejection of the mercy petition filed by one of the men, Vinay Sharma.
Meanwhile, some other people too had offered to execute the hanging of Nirbhaya case convicts. Dalit activist Ravi Kumar belonging to Himachal Pradesh has written to President Ram Nath Kovind to appoint him as a temporary executioner in Tihar Jail to hang the convicts in the case.
Amid reports that Delhi’s Tihar jail, where the Nirbhaya convicts are lodged, do not have an executioner to carry out the death sentence, the hangman at the Meerut prison Pawan ‘Jallad’ had also indicated that he is ready to carry out the execution in the Tihar Jail of the four men convicted of raping and murdering Nirbhaya in 2012.