Nirbhaya convicts refused last meal, hardly slept and didn't bathe

NEW DELHI: The four convicts in the Nirbhaya case spent a restless night at Delhi's Tihar Jail before their hanging today. Their last few hours were spent in isolation, in separate cells, jail officials said.

Akshay Thakur, 31, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, and Mukesh Singh, 32, were hanged at 5:30 this morning, giving closure to the family of a young medical student who was gang-raped and tortured on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.

The execution took place less than two hours after the Supreme Court dismissed the final petition of the convicts.

The four men refused to eat and were up much of the night, said officials. The entire jail was on lockdown since last night, and officials said, few other prisoners in Asia's largest prison facility could sleep a wink ahead of the first execution since 2015.

The convicts were woken at 3:30 am, around the time they learnt they had reached the end of the road in courts.

Three convicts - Pawan, Vinay and Mukesh -did labour work at Tihar Jail. The money for the work they did during their time in prison will be sent to their families, jail officials said. Akshay Thakur, however, has no earnings as he did not engage in any labour work at Tihar. All their belongings too will be sent to their families.

Vinay had earlier in February attempted to hurt himself by banging his head against a wall in his cell.

Their bodies were kept hanging for 30 minutes as per the protocol in Delhi Prison Rule, following which a doctor declared them dead.

Their bodies were moved to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for autopsy. A five-member panel will do the post-mortem before they are disposed of as per their religion.