The first day of the second fortnight of the last month of the year wreaked havoc on a girl in Delhi. On December 16, 2012, a student was gang-raped in a moving bus in the presence of one of her friends and both of them were thrown out of the bus in the freezing cold night. The victim, who was later taken to Singapore for treatment, died there. The 23-year-old victim of this case was named “Nirbhaya” and the demand for justice for her took the form of a movement in the country.
Six persons including Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh were made accused in this case. One of them was a minor. Ram Singh, an accused in the case, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail after the trial began. The minor was convicted after a trial and sent to a reform home. After staying in the reform home for three years, he was released in 2015.
After a long legal battle, the four convicts in this case were finally hanged on 20 March 2020.
The date of 16th December is also recorded in history with the tragic incident of terrorist attack on innocent school children in Pakistan. On 16 December 2014, Tehreek-e-Taliban terrorists targeted a school in Peshawar and opened fire indiscriminately, killing 150 people. Of these, 134 were children.
Six terrorists entered the army school in security forces uniform and carried out this cowardly attack. There were more than 1500 children in the school at that time and more than 1000 children were evacuated safely during the attack. The remaining children were left trapped in the school and 134 of them lost their lives.