Bodies of Nirbhaya killers taken out of Tihar Jail for post-mortem at DDU Hospital

New Delhi, Mar 20: The bodies of four Nirbhaya case convicts, hanged at Tihar Jail on Friday morning, were taken to DDU Hospital for post-mortem, an official said. According to the official, a panel of doctors will perform post-mortem examination on the bodies at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital later in the day.

The four men -- Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma(26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) -- convicted of the gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern were hanged at 5.30 am.

Jail officials said the bodies were kept hanging for half an hour, a mandatory procedure after execution as per the prison manual. This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.

The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their desperate attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for January 22.

In last-gasp attempts, one of the convicts knocked on the doors of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court just hours before the hanging. Hours before the execution, Pawan Kumar Gupta approached the Supreme Court challenging rejection of the second mercy petition by the President.

In an unprecedented late-night hearing that began at 2.30 AM and lasted an hour, a Supreme Court bench dismissed his last plea, paving the way for the execution. It also refused to pass any direction allowing Gupta and Akshay Singh to meet their family members just before they are sent to the gallows.

Relieved that their daughter finally got justice after a seven-year-long legal struggle, Nirbhaya's parents said they will continue their "fight for India's daughters". "We finally got justice. We will continue our fight for justice for India's daughters. Justice delayed, but not denied," her mother told reporters after the hanging. She added that women will definitely feel safer after the execution of the convicts. The mother said the entire country was awake and waiting for justice.

There was cheer after the hanging as hundreds of people, carrying the national flag and shouting slogans of 'long live Nirbhaya' and 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', gathered outside the Tihar Jail since early hours of Friday. Some of them distributed sweets after the four convicts were executed. Among the people who gathered outside the jail was social activist Yogita Bhayana.