2012 Delhi gangrape, six years on: Jyoti Singh's mother Asha Devi asks girls to not consider themselves weak

New Delhi: Expressing her disappointment over the failure of law and order situation in the country, Asha Devi, the mother of the 2012 gang rape victim Jyoti Singh, has requested all the parents to not deprive their girls of education, adding that the girls should never consider themselves weak. [caption id=“attachment_5162161” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File Image of Asha Devi, mother of 2012 gangrape victim. ANI[/caption] Speaking to ANI on the sixth anniversary of the Delhi gangrape case, Devi said, “Culprits in a criminal case like this are still alive. It’s a failure of law and order situation. We want to tell the girls everywhere to not consider themselves weak and request parents to not deprive their girls of education.” The 23-year-old paramedic student was raped on the intervening night of 16-17 December, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by five men and a juvenile. The victim, who was severely assaulted, was thrown out on the road along with her male friend. She succumbed to the injuries at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore on 29 December, where she had been airlifted for medical treatment. The incident triggered outrage and protests not only across the country but overseas as well. The incident prompted the government to overhaul anti-rape laws. On 9 July, 2018, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra and comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice R Bhanumathi, upheld the death sentence awarded to four of the accused in May 2017 after three of them - Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta - filed a petition in the court to review the judgment. Akshay Singh, the fourth convict, did not file a review petition against his death sentence. One of the accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in jail nearly three months after the crime, while the juvenile was convicted by the Juvenile Justice Board and was let off in December 2015 after serving three years in a reformation home.