NEW DELHI — India on Friday executed four men convicted of the gang rape and murder of a student in Delhi in 2012 that sparked mass protests across the country.

The four convicts —— Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh — who were sentenced to death a trial court in 2013 were hanged in the capital's high-security Tihar jail in the first executions in India since 2015.

In the last few months, all four convicts filed petitions in the Supreme Court in a bid to reduce their sentences to life imprisonment. But the top court rejected their petitions, leaving the men with no other legal recourse. A last-minute appeal to have the death penalties commuted was also rejected hours before the executions.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy student died from her injuries days after being raped by six men on a moving bus. The incident caused outrage and led to new anti-rape laws in India.

The victim Jyoti Singh was dubbed Nirbhaya — the fearless one — by the press as she could not be named under Indian law.

Six people were held for the attack. One of them, Ram Singh, was found dead in jail in March 2013, having apparently taken his own life.

Another, who was 17 at the time of the attack, was released in 2015 after serving three years in a reform facility — the maximum term possible for a juvenile in India, according to a BBC report.

"We are satisfied that finally my daughter got justice after seven years," the victim's mother Asha Devi told reporters outside the jail. "The beasts have been hanged."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his satisfaction over the execution, saying that "justice has prevailed.""It is of utmost importance to ensure dignity and safety of women," in a tweet. — Agencies