The parents say they will continue the fight and decide further course of action after discussing with their lawyers.
"We haven't got justice," said Asha Devi, the distraught mother of Jyoti Singh after the Delhi High Court ruled today that the youngest of six men who brutally gang-raped her daughter on a moving bus in 2012 cannot be kept in a special home any more.
Today's court order means the convict, now 21, will be released from the remand home where he has been kept for the last three years. "We agree it is a serious issue. But after December 20, the juvenile cannot be kept at a special home as per law," the High Court said today, also ordering that a rehabilitation plan be worked out for him.
Outside the High Court, Jyoti's mother looked shattered as she said, "Despite our efforts, a heinous convict is now released. The court abandoned us. We did not get justice."
"We are upset but what can we do? We are bound by the court order. The court is bigger than us," said Badrinath, Jyoti Singh's father. But he also said that their fight was far from over.
"Two-year-old children are being raped by people who get away because they are juvenile. Our fight will continue. We will talk to our lawyers before deciding our further course of action," he said.
The convict was a few months short of 18 when he and five others attacked Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old medical student, on December 16, 2012. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital. The incident led to massive protests and demands for more stringent anti-rape laws.
While one of the men who attacked Jyoti died in jail, four have been sentenced to death. The juvenile was sentenced to three years in a reform home.
Since her death, Jyoti's parents have led a demand for a change in the law so that teenagers involved in serious crimes can be tried as adults. They have demanded that their daughter's rapist must not be set free and if he is, his name and identity must be revealed.