New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order in connection with December 16 Nirbhaya gang rape case after hearing concluded over plea challenging death sentence of four death row convicts.
The convicts had approached the Supreme Court after the Delhi high court had sentenced capital punishment to all four accused in the case.
The four convicts –Akshay, Pawan, Vijay and Mukesh had challenged the sentence after the Delhi high court found it was a rarest of the rare case. The case was placed before a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had asked Delhi's Tihar Jail superintendent to file a report regarding the conduct of the four death row convicts of the December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder case in prison.
"In our considered opinion, the superintendent of jail should have filed the report with regard to the conduct of the accused persons since they are in custody for almost four years. That would have thrown light on their conduct.
"Let the report with regard to their conduct be filed by the Superintendent of Jail in a sealed cover in the Court on the next date of hearing," a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had said.
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Justice Dipak Misra had prima facie agreed with the contention of senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as the amicus curiae, that the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), relating to sentencing of convicts, had not been followed in letter and spirit by the trial court in the case.
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