India Police Shoot Dead 4 Rapists Whose Crime Triggered National Outrage

"Justice is done, my daughter's soul can rest in peace," said the father of the veterinarian who was gang-raped and murdered near Hyderabad, India following the killing of all the accused in a police encounter.

In a twist to a crime that horrified not just India but the world, all the four men accused in the gang-rape and murder of a 26-year-old vet in Telangana were killed in an encounter with the police in the wee hours of Friday when the men were taken to the crime scene for a reconstruction, NDTV reported.

According to the police, the suspects were shot when they tried to snatch the officers' weapons and escape.

"The suspects tried to snatch weapons from the guards but were shot dead," Prakash Reddy, a deputy commissioner of police in Hyderabad told AFP news agency. "We called an ambulance but they died before any medical help could reach them."

After the encounter, many took to Twitter and Facebook to applaud the police calling it a "quick justice," while others opposed the action of the police.

Although the victim's family claimed that their daughter could have been saved if the police hadn't wasted precious time. The police were heavily criticized after the murder for inaction for nearly two hours as instead of commencing the search operations, the policemen were fighting over jurisdiction. The family also said that before filing the complaint, the police even leveled allegation that "she had eloped with someone," The Times of India reported.

The four men, Mohammed Arif (26), Jollu Shiva (20), Jollu Naveen (20) and Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu (20) were arrested on Nov. 29 within 36 hours of the crime and the country was taken aback when it was revealed that the suspects were fed the mutton curry with rice in dinner.

Interestingly, some people also see the encounter as conspiracy criticizing the killing of the suspects. Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association said, this is custodial killing and not justice.

"The police is claiming that the suspects attacked the police party at the crime scene where the police had taken them to recreate the crime and they have to be killed. But that doesn’t hold the truth as the men were in police custody and were unarmed, so there is no question of them attacking the police," Al Jazeera quoted Krishnan as saying.

The incident triggered national outrage and thousands took to the streets in protest over the week following which the Telangana government and the law department had set up a fast track court to hear the case. There were calls from both politicians and the public for the men to be lynched. It is widely believed that the laws in India are not stringent enough to instill fear in the minds of the culprits. They commit heinous crimes as they know they can easily get away with anything.

The gruesome incident happened on Nov. 27 when the accused planned a crime on seeing the doctor park her scooter near the Shamshabad toll plaza. While one of the accused punctured the wheel of her scooter, the other approached her offering help with the flat tire. The third accused took her scooter away for in pretext to get it fixed. After coming back in some time, he told her all the repair shops were shut.

The woman got suspicious, called her sister and told her she was scared looking at the people who had come to her aid. By the time the victim's sister called her again to check on her, her phone was switched off and she was dragged away, raped and burnt alive. Her charred body of the veterinary surgeon was found the next day under a culvert on the Hyderabad-Bengaluru national highway.

A poll of gender experts by Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018 rated India as the world's most dangerous country for women. iN 2017, Police registered 33,658 cases of rape in India, an average of 92 rapes every day, according to government figures.

Sexual violence against women and rape crimes have been in focus in India since the horrific Dec. 2012 gang-rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi.

Asha Devi, the mother of the woman who died in that 2012 gang rape, known as Nirbhaya, expressed happiness post the killing of the 4 accused in the Telangana gang-rape case. She told Indian media she was “extremely happy with this punishment. The police have done a great job and I demand that no action should be taken against the police personnel.”

However, there seems to be no sign of crimes against women abating in India and activists have continually blamed the governments for failing to combat crimes against women and not doing enough to make public spaces safe for them.