SC To Hear Plea On Nirbhaya Case Convicts Hanging, Tihar Officials Seek New Date For Execution
The Supreme Court will hear the Centre's appeal challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict dismissing its plea against stay on the execution of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.?
Additional Solicitor General KM Natraj told the court that jail authorities are unable to execute the convicts in the case despite the fact that their review petitions have been dismissed and curative petitions and mercy pleas of three of them have been rejected.?
The Delhi High Court Wednesday held that all the four convicts are to be executed together and not separately while setting a week's deadline for them to avail the remaining remedies.?
If the convicts choose not to make any type of petition in seven days from now, the institutions/ authorities concerned will deal with the matter, as per the law, without further delay, it said.?
Hours after the high court's verdict, the Centre filed an appeal against it in the apex court.The high court said all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case have to be executed together, not separately and faulted the authorities concerned for not taking steps for issuance of death warrants after the rejection of appeals of the convicts by the Supreme Court in 2017.?
The trial court had on January 31 stayed "till further orders" execution of the four convicts in the case Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Kumar Sharma, and Akshay Kumar.?
Meanwhile, the Tihar jail authorities have approached a trial court in Delhi seeking a fresh date for the execution of four convicts in the case.The prison authorities moved the application under Section 413 and 414 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and sought to fix a new date for the execution.?
Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana has sought responses of all respondents, including the convicts, and slated the matter for hearing on Friday.?
Earlier, on Wednesday, President Ram Nath Kovind had rejected the mercy petition of convict Akshay Thakur. Mercy petitions of Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh have also been rejected, leaving Pawan the only convict to seek clemency.?
The four men were sentenced to death in 2013 for the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on December 16, 2012.Two others were also arrested for the same crime, but one of them, Ram Singh, the driver of the bus had committed suicide in the Tihar Jail during the trial of the case. The sixth accused, who was a juvenile, at the time of the crime was convicted by a juvenile justice board was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
