Nirbhaya Gangrape Convict Akshay Kumar Singh Files Review Plea In Supreme Court

Akshay Singh, one of the convicts in the gangrape and murder of the Nirbhaya case, filed a review plea in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The development comes amid strong buzz that the Tihar Jail officials are preparing to hang the convicts in the December 16 case on that day itself. Earlier in the day, another convict in the case was shifted from Mandoli to Tihar Jail. Pawan Kumar Gupta, who was lodged in the Mandoli Jail, was shifted to Tihar recently, Director General (Prison) Sandeep Goel said. Gupta is lodged in Jail No. 2 of Tihar, where two other convicts in the case -- Mukesh Singh and Akshay -- are also lodged, while Vinay Sharma is in Jail No. 4 of Tihar, another jail official said.

Earlier, Vinay Sharma, one of the convicts facing the gallows in the Nirbhaya gang-rape case, had asked that the mercy plea in his name be withdrawn as he never authorised it. The convict claimed that the mercy plea sent to President Ram Nath Kovind by Union Home Ministry wasn't signed and authorized by him. The development comes a day after the victim's mother wrote to the president seeking dismissal of the clemency petition. Seeking to draw a parallel between the two cases, Nirbhaya's parents also said unlike them, the family of the deceased veterinary would not have to wait for justice.

In a letter written to Kovind, Nirbhaya's mother said the petition filed by one of the convicts, Vinay Sharma, "deliberately tries to avoid the execution of the death sentence and hamper the dissemination of justice".

"Almost seven years have lapsed since then. The trauma, pain and agony suffered by the applicant (mother) is unbearable and the wait for justice is getting longer and longer," the letter, sent through his lawyer, said.

The Union Home Ministry has sent to President Ram Nath Kovind the recommendation of the Delhi government rejecting the mercy plea of one of the convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya rape-murder case, sources said on Friday.

The Home Ministry has also recommended in the file rejection of the mercy petition of one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case, an official said.

News Nation has reported that Nirbhaya gangrape and murder convicts will be hanged on December 16, the day heinous crime took place. The sources told News Nation that the authorities are following the ‘due procedure.’ The sources, however, rejected that latest media reports about Buxar jail preparing the execution ropes for the December 16 convicts. The sources say that the reports about Buxar jail is untrue because the officials can’t issue such an order until the court has issued the ‘black warrant’. The sources also said that the ‘execution chamber’ located inside the jail No. 3 inside Tihar premises ‘is always ready’.

One of the accused Ram Singh had hanged himself in the jail and another, the juvenile, was convicted of rape and murder and given the maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment in a reform facility. On July 9 last year, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts -- Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) -- seeking review of it 2017 verdict which upheld the capital punishment given to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case. The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (33), had not filed a review plea in the apex court.