Nirbhaya Convicts Earned Rs 1,37,000 As Prison Wages In Last 7 Years: Report

The Nirbhaya convicts earned more than Rs 1 lakh as prison wages during their time in high-profile Tihar Jail in Delhi, a media report said on Wednesday. The NDTV report said that of the four convicts, only three worked in jail. Akshay Thakur Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma earned Rs 1,37,000 as prison wages while convict Mukesh Singh refused to do any manual work. The report also said that all four of them broke prison rules 23 times. Vinay Kumar Sharma broke the prison rules for maximum 11 times, the NDTV report said. The report also said that the rapists failed their class 10 exams during the prison time. The fourth convict – Vinay Sharma- ‘took admission in a bachelor's degree program but he couldn't complete it,’ the report said.

Mukesh Singh’s mercy plea

Meanwhile, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case who are to be hanged on January 22 filed a mercy plea before the President on Tuesday shortly after the Supreme Court refused to stay the execution of two of them including him. The mercy plea was filed by 32-year-old Mukesh Kumar, who along with Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25), are scheduled to be hanged at 7 am on January 22 in Tihar jail following an order by a Delhi court which issued their death warrants on January 7.

Mukesh and Vinay, who sought yet another legal remedy to escape the gallows, failed to get any relief when the Supreme Court dismissed their curative petitions against their conviction and capital punishment. A curative petition is the last and final judicial remedy available to a person convicted by courts of law.

Case so far

The Supreme Court on December 18 had dismissed the plea of Akshay seeking review of its decision, saying review petition is not "re-hearing of appeal over and over again" and it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.

The night of horror

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

On July 9 last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

The top court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.