The trial in the December 2012 gang-rape case has reached the penultimate stage with the designated court here having completed recording of the statements of two of the four accused.
On conclusion of the recording of statement by the four accused, which is likely to be over next week, the court will begin hearing final arguments before pronouncing the judgment.
The judgment is likely to come next month.
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Meanwhile, the Juvenile Justice Board has reserved for July 25 its verdict on the juvenile delinquent in the case.
The trial proceedings against one of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, have abated after he committed suicide at the Tihar Central jail here during the trial.
On Friday, one of the accused, Akshay Thakur, in his statement before Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna completely denied that that he had sexually assaulted the 23-year-old physiotherapy student in the moving bus. He said that he had only heard about this incident. He said that he was not present in Delhi on December 16, when the woman was bestially raped, as he had left for his village a day before.
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He also denied the prosecution’s allegation that the victim had named him as an accused in her written statement.
Terming the victim’s statement a fabrication by the Delhi Police, he claimed that he had been falsely implicated in the case.
The Court will begin recording Vinay Sharma’s statement this coming Monday and thereafter record Pawan Gupta’s statement. The statement of the third accused, Mukesh, has already been recorded.
Though Mukesh admitted driving the bus in which the woman was raped, he denied that he was involved in the crime. Mukesh is the brother of Ram Singh.
The woman had been raped and brutalised and her male companion assaulted, while defending her, in a moving bus late on December 16 last. A fortnight after the incident, the woman had succumbed to her injuries at a hospital in Singapore.