The case of a 19-year-old girl who was brutally gangraped and murdered on February 9, 2012, around 10 months before the Nirbhaya incident, is now closer to justice after it was brought to public light by Mail Today earlier this month.

The Dwarka Court on Thursday convicted the three accused - Ravi, Rahul and Vinod -in the 'rarest of rare' case and booked them under the Indian Penal Code Sections 376(2)(g), 302, 363 and 201 for gangrape, murder, kidnapping and destruction of evidence, respectively.

The victim was returning after work from Cybercity in Gurgaon when she was kidnapped, gangraped for three days and later brutally killed-in an attempt to wipe off any evidence-by burning her body with cigarette butts, mutilating her eyes and face with screwdrivers and then pouring acid over it, inserting a broken liquor bottle in her private parts, and finally leaving her to bleed to death. She was found four days later in a field in Rewari, Haryana.

Anita Gupta, a social worker helping the family, said the brutality of the case was at par, if not more, with the December 16 incident. "Just because the incident happened in a remote area, the world did not get to know about it," she said.

As the father of the victim sat in the court listening to the case proceedings, a 150-odd people strong crowd-including the mother of the girl, relatives and neighbours-gathered outside the court in the morning. They shouted slogans and demanded severe capital punishment. After the news of the conviction spread, the crowd turned jubilant and almost everyone had tears of triumph in their eyes. "We've been attached with this case since the beginning as the victim was from our locality. She was our very own child and we only want justice for her," said Malti Negi of Chhawla village.

People demanded capital punishment for the accused on Thursday. People demanded capital punishment for the accused on Thursday.

Another neighbour of the victim's family, Saroj Rawat, said, "We came to every court hearing with the girl's father to show our support. We have even cried for a speedy justice. Had our girl's story been out in the limelight earlier and the guilty booked, the Nirbhaya case might not have happened at all."

The court has set February 17 to announce its verdict. The victim's mother, as she wiped her tears, said, "I always had faith in the judiciary and I believe after this, my daughter's soul will rest in peace." She wants nothing less than capital punishment for the three accused who were so brutal to her child.