An Indian court convicted four men in the fatal gang rape of a medical student in the capital Dehli last December.  The brutality of the assault shocked India and the world, and opened a conversation about India’s attitude towards such crimes.

“I convict all of the accused,” Judge Yogesh Khanna told a packed court room.  “They have been found guilty of gang rape, unnatural offences, destruction of evidence, and for committing the murder of the helpless victim.”

Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, and Pawan Gupta are aged 19 to 29 years old.  They could get the death penalty in the sentencing hearing that begins today.

“We are happy with the conviction. Now we expect the judge to sentence all of them to death,” the victim's father told Indian media after the verdict.

Last month, another defendant who was a minor at the time of the crime was convicted and sentenced to three years in a juvenile detention center, the maximum sentence under Indian law.  A sixth defendant was found hanged in his cell in March.

It was the middle of last December when the rapists they tricked the 23-year-old woman and a male friend into boarding an out-of-service bus.

Police said the assailants beat both of them and then raped the woman.  Her injuries were so profound, she had to be airlifted to a better medical facility in Singapore, where she died 10 days later.

“The rapists injured my friend in the most shocking ways while they beat me with a metal bar and dumped us near a highway, “said the male friend of the murder victim.  “They wanted us to die. Now, I want them to die and she also wanted them to die.  She wanted them to be set on fire.”