Over the weekend, the families of the convicts named - Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, and Akshay Kumar reached out to the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind appealing him to also grant them death by euthanasia, the media reported.
In India, the Supreme Court allowed passive euthanasia in 2018 – but only for terminally ill patients or people in coma to choose the option and “die with dignity”. People with emotional pressure – which is considered to be the case of the families of the rape convicts – evidently do not fulfil the criteria to be granted euthanasia.
“We request you to accept our request and give us permission for euthanasia and stop any crime from happening in the future so that another incident like Nirbhaya doesn’t happen and the court doesn’t have to hang five people in place of one,” the media reports quoted the families saying in a letter written to President Kovind in Hindi.
Aged parents, siblings and young kids of the convicts have made it to the group of euthanasia seekers.
As of now, President Kovind’s official reply to the mercy death-seeking letter from the convicts’ families remains unknown.
Meanwhile, netizens have shared their unadulterated opinions on social networking platforms calling this step from the families of the rapists a big fat drama.
On 16 December 2012, six men brutally gang raped a 23 year old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in New Delhi. The gruesome sexual assault eventually killed the girl who succumbed to her injuries.
One of the accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in prison back in 2013. Another convict – who was a juvenile – was sentenced to a three years' imprisonment in a reform facility. He was released in December 2015.