dna special: While AP Singh defended Delhi gang-rape convicts for personal and professional reasons, his colleague Anand held brief as legal principle

Ae malik tere bande hum..., the song from Do Ankhen Barah Haath greets you when you call up AP Singh, the lawyer who represented Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur, two of the five convicts in the December 16 Delhi gangrape. It’s a telling choice of ring tone since V Shantaram’s landmark film was all about crime, punishment and the power of penitence.

Singh was the man of the moment on Friday shielded by the police as he along with the other lawyers, entered the court a little after 2 pm. When he came out shortly after 2.30 pm after the death penalty was announced, it was him again that the media pounced upon. But the past nine months, ever since he decided to defend the rapists in the face of the Bar Council’s initial directive to lawyers not to do so, have been a roller coaster ride. There was all the media attention and the pressure from angry citizens on the case. There were threats to his life, too. “An FIR was filed, but I decided to forgive them,” he says.

However demonised the gangrape convicts may be in the media and the public consciousness, Singh said, he decided to defend them for only one reason — his mother told him to. “Vinay and Akshay’s parents met her and she ordered me. I always follow her aadesh,” he said.

“My sister told me not to defend initially, but then she too agreed when she saw the chargesheet. This is purely professional; there is nothing personal in this,” says Singh, who is the father of a daughter. “Now, other lawyers say that they admire my courage and persistence.”

For VK Anand, who defended Mukesh Singh, the only of the four convicts to plead guilty, taking up the case was a simple matter of legal principle. “Every accused has the right to a defence; it is his basic right.” While the publicity that the case had attracted had brought him to prominence, “I have been a lawyer for 30 years and have seen many rape cases. This was a case like any other,” Anand said. He was also the lawyer defending Ram Singh, the main accused in the gang rape who was found dead in Tihar jail in March. Anand had got into a spat inside the court with lawyer ML Sharma, who had defended Singh earlier.

So how did they find the accused during interactions? Were they penitent?
Singh’s answer reveals where his sympathies lie: “They were young boys. They had no criminal records, their families too had no criminal record. Padhna chahte hain (they want to study). Vinod sat for his Indian Air Force exams, he cleared it too.” Singh is angry at the sentence: “It was a media trial,” he railed.

“Mukesh was the only one to plead guilty. He admitted in court that he was driving the bus,” Anand defended his client. “His case is definitely not the rarest of rare and does not deserve death,” he said.