I didn't do it, other five are guilty: December 16 gang-rape accused

NEW DELHI: One of the accused in the December 16 gang-rape case on Wednesday told a Delhi court that he is innocent and claimed that the other five co-accused had brutally assaulted and gang-raped the 23-year-old girl in a moving bus.

Trying to wash his hands off the crime, Mukesh contended before Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna that he was only driving the bus, while the other co-accused committed the crime and threw the girl and her male friend out of the bus near a flyover.

"I was only driving the bus. The other accused put off the light inside the bus at a flyover near Malai Mandir in south Delhi," Mukesh said in reply to the question put by the judge.

On being asked by the judge why they had picked up the victim and her friend from the bus stop at Munirka in south Delhi, Mukesh said they had stopped the bus as the youth had gestured with his hand to board it.

On December 16, a female physiotherapy intern was beaten up and gang-raped in a bus in which she was travelling with her male friend who was also brutally attacked with an iron rod.

There were others in the bus, including the driver, Ram Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh all of whom had raped the girl, it said.

The victim died of her injuries on December 29 last year while undergoing treatment at a Singapore hospital.

During the course of the trial, Ram Singh was found dead in Tihar Jail on March 11 and court proceedings against him stand abated. The sixth accused, a juvenile, is facing the inquiry before the juvenile justice board here.