Rape trial: death sentence likely

Four men were convicted yesterday of the "cold-blooded" murder of a woman who was raped and tortured on a bus in New Delhi, India.

The four - bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, gym instructor Vinay Sharma, fruit seller Pawan Gupta and unemployed Mukesh Singh - face hanging, the maximum penalty for murder.

The trial judge will hear prosecution and defence arguments on sentencing today, when he could deliver his ruling.

The minimum sentence the men could get is life imprisonment, two defence lawyers said.

Judge Yogesh Khanna said he relied on the dying declaration of the victim in finding the men guilty.

The victim, who came from a lower middle-class family, worked in a call centre while she studied.

The four lured her and a male friend onto the bus as the pair returned home from watching a movie at a shopping mall.

The men repeatedly raped and tortured her with a metal bar before dumping her and her friend, naked and semi-conscious, on the road.

She died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later of internal injuries.