New Delhi, Sep 10 (IANS): It is "clearly and unequivocally" established that the convicts in the Dec 16, 2012 gang-rape also attempted to kill the male friend of the victim, the court said while holding four men guilty of an attempt to murder him.

On Dec 16, 2012, the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern boarded the bus with her male friend, 28, a software engineer, from Munirka in south Delhi, and they were brutally tortured and the woman was gang-raped by six people, including a juvenile, in a moving bus.

The six attackers threw both the physiotherapist intern and her male companion out of the vehicle -- without clothes -- on the street in the cold December night after committing the ghastly crime.

Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna said: "They tried to throw them out of the moving bus from its back door but when they found it to be jammed, they dragged both the victims in an injured, unconscious and naked condition by pulling their hairs to the front door of the bus presuming them to be dead and threw them out of the moving bus on a chilly winter night that too at a very dangerous place on the Jaipur highway."

"It is clearly and unequivocally established that accused persons also attempted to kill the complainant (software engineer) pursuant to the conspiracy and hence they are also liable to be held guilty under section 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC," the court said.

The judge also held the four convicts guilty of the woman's murder, gang-rape and kidnapping, among other charges.

The convicts destroyed evidence by washing the bus floor after the incident and burning the victims' clothes, police said.

"In the intervening night of Dec 16-17, 2012, accused Mukesh was seen washing the bus and that there were some other persons inside the bus washing it. Accused had burnt the clothes of the victims in pursuance of the conspiracy," the court said.