Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh were given death sentences at a trial in 2013.

They have now been hanged at Tihar Jail in the first set of executions in India since 2015.

The victim, dubbed ‘Nirbhaya’ – meaning ‘fearless’ in Sanskrit – was raped by six men on a moving bus. She died from her injuries a few days later.

One of the men arrested committed suicide in prison while another, a minor, served a jail sentence of three years.

All four convicts appealed to the Supreme Court in recent months, seeking life imprisonment. The court rejected their appeals.

Following their executions, the mother of the victim said: “I hugged my daughter’s photograph and told her we finally got justice.”

Her father said his “faith in the judiciary had been restored”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that “justice has prevailed”.

Figures from India’s National Crime Records Bureau show that police registered 33,977 cases of rape in 2018.