Nirbhaya Case: Convicts Set To Be Hanged Today As Delhi Court Rejects Plea Seeking Stay On Execution

The four men, convicted in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, will be hanged today morning as decided, a Delhi court ruled on Thursday. The Delhi's Patiala House court rejected petition of the convicts seeking stay on the execution. The convicts had requested that their execution be stopped, claiming that they still had legal remedies left. Akshay Thakur (31), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26), and Mukesh Singh (32) will hang at 5.30 am on Friday.

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Earlier, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain the plea of Mukesh Singh challenging a Delhi High Court order which rejected his claim that he was not in the city when at the time of crime on December 16, 2012. A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna said the convict has exhausted all his remedies and no fresh evidence can be entertained at this level. The bench said it does not find any merit in the plea and it cannot be entertained. The Delhi High Court had on Wednesday said there were no grounds to interfere in the detailed and reasoned order of the trial court. On Tuesday, the trial court dismissed Mukesh Singh's plea and asked the Bar Council of India to appropriately sensitise his counsel.

Earlier, Supreme Court dismissed the curative petition of another convict Pawan Gupta against the dismissal of his review plea rejecting his juvenility claim. Pawan Gupta had claimed that he was a minor at the time of offence and thereby his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. A six-judge bench headed by Justice NV Ramana dismissed the plea, saying "no case is made out".

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The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as "Nirbhaya" (fearless), was gang raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16, 2012. She died after a fortnight. Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case. The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

The trial court had issued death warrants of all convicts in the case - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Singh (31) - for hanging on March 20 at 5.30 am. (With agency inputs)