Nirbhaya rape case: Delhi Police contemplates invoking NSA act to keep juvenile convict in jail

The youngest of the six men who gang-raped and tortured a student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012 will be released from juvenile detention in less than three weeks. The five other accomplices, Vinay Sharma, Vinay Kumar, Ram Singh, Mukesh Gupta and Pawan Gupta were sentenced to death by the Delhi High Court. Ram Singh committed suicide in Tihar Jail in 2013. [caption id=“attachment_2509538” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] NDTV reported on its website that the Delhi police is considering placing charges under the National Security Act (NSA) in order to keep the 21-year-old convict in jail. For the gruesome crime, the convict, at the time, below 18, was sentenced to three years in a reform home. This lenient sentencing spurred demands for changes in law with regard to teenagers reported the website. Senior officers in the police met with legal experts on Saturday to discuss if anti-terror charges would stick against him. The website reported that an Intelligence Bureau report had mentioned that the convict had been ‘brainwashed’ by a suspect of the Delhi High Court blast in 2011. Under the NSA, a person can be jailed for 12 months at a stretch. The parents of the victim, ‘Nirbhaya’ had recently approached the home ministry, the courts and the National Human Rights Commission to stop his release and demanded that his face be shown. India Today quoted the father saying, “He is an evident threat to society, to women and my family as well. Nobody knows how he looks. He has shown no sign of improvement. He was on the way to becoming a jihadi. How do we know we are safe?” An NHRC statement said that the parents requested that there needs to be a ‘mechanism to keep a strict check on them’ and that the rate of committing crimes again is fairly high. Worried about a possible backlash after the convict’s release, the home ministry has asked for the opinion of the Delhi Police, reported NDTV.