Akshay Thakur was a 28-year-old married man with one son at the time of his arrest in December 2012. Originally from Bihar, he had come to Delhi seeking employment, though detailed information about his early life, such as education, family background, or work history, remains very limited in public records.

On the night of 16 December 2012, in South Delhi, India, a 23-year-old woman named Jyoti Singh boarded a private charter bus with her male friend after watching a movie at the Select Citywalk mall in Saket. The couple, unaware of the bus's true purpose, believed it was part of the public transport system. Inside the bus were six men, including Akshay Thakur, posing as ordinary passengers and driver staff. What followed over the next few hours would become one of the most horrific and widely condemned crimes in Indian history.

The six men on the bus including Mukesh Singh, Ram Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, and a juvenile whose name was withheld due to his age, launched a brutal and sustained attack on both Jyoti and her male friend. Using a metal rod, they beat the male companion unconscious. They then took turns gang-raping Jyoti Singh, beating her with the same rod, and inflicting internal injuries so severe that parts of her intestines had to be surgically removed in the hospital. The assault lasted for nearly an hour as the bus drove in circles across South Delhi.

After the attack, both victims were stripped, beaten, and thrown from the moving bus onto the side of the road, nearly naked and bleeding. The culprits attempted to clean the bus to destroy evidence before abandoning it.

Jyoti and her friend were discovered by passersby and rushed to the Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. The injuries sustained by Jyoti were catastrophic—her intestines were ruptured, and her body bore signs of extreme trauma. Despite multiple surgeries and attempts to stabilize her condition, her health rapidly declined. The Indian government, facing national and international pressure, transferred her to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore for advanced treatment. However, she died from her injuries on 29 December 2012, thirteen days after the attack.

The incident caused an unprecedented public outcry across India. Protesters took to the streets of major cities, demanding justice and tougher laws for crimes against women. The case came to symbolize the failures of India’s criminal justice system in protecting women, and the government's slow response to gender-based violence. Public anger was so intense that the government fast-tracked the investigation and trial.

Akshay Thakur was arrested shortly after the crime. He had returned to his hometown in Aurangabad, Bihar, where he was hiding. Police used CCTV footage, mobile phone tracing, and witness accounts to piece together the events and identify the suspects. Forensic evidence including bloodstains, fingerprints, and DNA samples—linked all six to the crime.

The trial began in early 2013 in a fast-track court specially set up to deal with the case. Akshay and the other four adult men were charged with rape, murder, attempted murder, unnatural offences, and destruction of evidence. On 10 September 2013, they were found guilty on all counts. The court noted that the crime was so heinous that it had “shocked the conscience of the nation.” On 13 September 2013, Akshay Thakur, along with Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Sharma, was sentenced to death by hanging.

One of the accused, Ram Singh, died in Tihar Jail on 11 March 2013, in what officials claimed was a suicide. However, suspicions of foul play remain due to the controversial circumstances of his death.

Akshay Thakur’s legal team filed several appeals to overturn his conviction and sentence, including mercy petitions. These were all rejected by the Indian courts, culminating in the Supreme Court upholding the death penalty in May 2017. In 2020, after a series of delays caused by last-minute legal tactics and public debates around the ethics of capital punishment, the court issued the final warrant.

On 20 March 2020, at exactly 5:30 AM IST, Akshay Thakur and the three other convicts were hanged simultaneously at Tihar Jail, New Delhi.