Nirbhaya Case: Supreme Court Refuses Convict Mukesh's Plea Claiming He Wasn't In Delhi At Time Of Crime

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain the plea of Mukesh Singh, one of the four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, 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".

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

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.

(With agency inputs)