Outside the Delhi High Court on Friday, there were few clues that a momentous decision was underway in India's watershed gang rape case. Besides a small band of lawyers and journalists, few were present when the court ruled that come Sunday, the youngest of six men who tortured and raped a physiotherapy student on a moving Delhi bus would be a free man.
He had participated in the most heinous of acts but because he was just shy of his 18th birthday on the night of the rape, he served only three years in custody, a sentence that many felt amounted to a severe miscarriage of justice.
And yet, there were not the thousands of protesters who gathered on the streets of the Indian capital after horrific details of the rape came to light. Nor was there the anger expressed outside this very court in September 2013 at the sentencing of the other convicted rapists. On that hot day, Indians had demanded "fansi," death by hanging.
But in the cool breeze of this December day, the outrage that sprouted from this case seemed a memory. The only expression of disappointment came from the victim's parents and the lawyers who had fought to defer release.
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