Washington: The US has welcomed the verdict of the court awarding death sentence to the four convicts in the December 16 gangrape-cum-murder case of a 23-year-old student, which had sparked an outrage across the country and abroad. "We are heartened to see that the Indian justice system has spoken and the perpetrators of these heinous attacks have been convicted and sentenced in a court of law," State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said.

"Like so many people in India and around the world, we were saddened by this horrific act of violence, yet moved by civil society's response at the same time," she said. Secretary of State John Kerry had spoken over the issue this spring, and cited the woman's bravery and her fight for justice, she added. "In India, as in all countries around the world, gender-based violence continues to be a challenge that we are focussed on countering, on working with people to counter all across the world," Harf said. The death sentence awarded on Friday by a Delhi court, in the sensational gangrape-cum-murder case, said the "beastly" and "hair-raising" manner in which the crime was committed against the 23-year-old girl, fell in the rarest of rare category.