INDIA GANG RAPE FOUR MEN TO BE SNTENCED.

KATY DAIGLE

Associated Press= NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian judge is expected to hand down sentences Friday in the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus, with the prosecutor and many government officials calling for the four convicted rapists to be executed.

The men were convicted Tuesday in the December attack of the 23-year-old woman, a crime that unleashed a wave of public anger over the treatment of women in India. The woman died two weeks after the attack of internal injuries.

The four men face either life imprisonment or death by hanging. The men called out to reporters as police drove them into the courthouse complex before the sentencing hearing. "Save us, brothers! Save us!" they could be heard shouting from the police van.

The victim's family, along with numerous politicians and government officials, have called for the men to be executed.

On Friday morning, the victim's father again urged the harshest sentence.

"They are not worthy of forgiveness," said the father, who cannot be named under Indian laws guarding his daughter's identity as a rape victim. "They should not even be given life imprisonment. They should only be handed the death sentence," he said before leaving his home for the courthouse.

A small group of protesters calling for executions also gathered at the complex before the hearing.

"Justice will be delivered only when the rapists are hanged," said Ram Chandar a protester and retired government official.

In calling for hangings, prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said Wednesday that the attack shocked India's "collective conscience," noting that the police report showed the men pulled out some of the victim's body parts after savagely penetrating her with an iron rod.

"There can be nothing more diabolic than a helpless girl put through torture," he said.

Judge Yogesh Khanna said he would hand down the sentences Friday.

India's Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should be used only in "the rarest of rare cases," though what defines those cases remains highly debated.

By most estimates, more than 100 people are sentenced to death in India in most years, but the vast majority of those cases are eventually commuted to life in prison.