Reuters
New Delhi

The youngest of six men convicted of the 2012 gang-rape of a woman, in a case that shocked the country, moved closer to being freed tomorrow, after a court said it could not extend his three-year sentence.
The case turned a global spotlight on the treatment of women in India, where police say a rape is reported every 20 minutes, and the sentence for the young man sparked debate over whether the country is too soft on youthful offenders.
The court was hearing a petition by a ruling-party politician demanding a longer sentence for the man, who was 17 at the time of the crime, after he had received the maximum punishment of three years from the Juvenile Justice Board.
The Delhi high court judges said they could not halt the man’s release because his sentence complied with existing law.
“We don’t want to interfere in the Juvenile Justice Board,” the two judges said in their ruling yesterday.
A lawyer for the man declined to comment. In 2012, the man and five adult companions lured the 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist and her male friend onto a bus in the capital, where they repeatedly raped the woman and beat both with a metal bar before dumping them on to a road.
The woman died two weeks later of her injuries. Four of the adults were sentenced to death while the fifth hanged himself in prison. The death sentences have not yet been carried out.
Police accused the teenager of being violent, and said he pulled out part of the woman’s intestines with his hands.
“I want every woman to protest on the streets of the country to stop his release,” Asha Devi, the victim’s mother, said. “There is no way that society can allow a dangerous man to walk free.”
“This is a setback for the entire country. The court said that as per current legislation, he cannot be remanded for more than three years,” Anil Soni, one of the lawyers in the case, told reporters.
“The terror that we had faced a few years back will be back on our streets on December 20,” he added, referring to the release date.  
The government responded to the public outcry over the rape by fast-tracking tougher laws against sex crimes, and members of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government have pushed to change the juvenile law and reduce the age of attaining adulthood to 16, from 18.
The petition was filed by BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) politician Subramanian Swamy who called for the law to be reinterpreted.
The final call on the man’s release would be made by a management panel of the Juvenile Justice Board after assessing if he had been “socially mainstreamed”, Swamy said.