NEW DELHI: They were ordinary men, and like everyone had their own traits, some likeable, some unpleasant. Each had a different job, at least four of them: a fitness instructor who loved dancing, bus driver, the driver’s assistant, or ‘cleaner’, and a fruit vendor. The fifth was mostly unemployed but helped clean the bus occasionally and the sixth was an underaged boy who sometimes assisted the bus driver. None had a crime history to speak of. Until a joyride in a bus brought out the demon in them.
Ram Singh, a bus driver, and Mukesh Singh were brothers with a local reputation as toughies who regularly got into fights with neighbours and shopkeepers at Ravidass Camp in south Delhi’s RK Puram. The siblings mostly lived by themselves but were visited once in a while by their parents. It was in Ram Singh’s bus that the six picked up Nirbhaya and her friend on December 16, 2012 from Munirka. The bus driver and his assistant, Akshay Thakur, took turns at the steering wheel as the six ravaged the physiotherapy intern.
Ram Devi, the Singhs’ neighbour, remembered, “The brothers never talked with anyone. There was something strange about their behaviour. If they talked, it was always to argue. They were not kind men.” According to the locals, the mother visited the house once in a while, but she
