Women’s activists have said they wonder how much difference the executions will make, and lamented how little has changed since Nirbhaya’s death. After her assault, huge protests erupted across the country, with hundreds of thousands of young people pouring into the streets demanding tougher rape laws, more effective policing and better treatment of women. Many Indian women are forced into arranged marriages, harassed on the streets and silenced by the men in their family.

“We keep talking about women and we do nothing to educate men,” said Deepa Narayan, a social scientist who recently published a book on how women are treated in India. “Even the police and the judicial system, they’re all part of the same patriarchal culture.”

The Indian government created a high-level committee, the Verma Commission, to recommend possible changes to the laws related to sexual violence against women. Though some laws covering rape have been stiffened, India still makes international headlines for horrendous gang rapes, and the cases keep coming. Only a few months ago, a young veterinarian was raped and murdered by a group of men in an incident reminiscent of the 2012 bus attack.

India has been reluctant to execute its citizens. Its last execution was of Yakub Memon, a convicted terrorist, in 2015. A huge percentage of the more than 2,000 death sentences imposed in the past two decades have been overturned or commuted by higher courts, a recent study found.

But in the Nirbhaya case, there was enormous pressure on the courts and the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to show no mercy. The four convicts had tried everything to avoid the hanging, filing petition after petition.

One of the convicts even tried, in vain, to use New Delhi’s pollution problem as an argument not to hang him. “Everyone is aware of what is happening in Delhi NCR in regard water and air,” said the petition filed by Mr. Kumar in December. “Life is short to short, then why death penalty?”