2012 Nirbhaya Rapists Will Be Hanged On Jan 22 As SC Dismisses Curative Pleas By Two Convicts

The 2012 Delhi gang-rape convicts have exhausted their last judicial option to escape the gallows after the Supreme Court dismissed two curative petitions seeking to reconsider the death sentence.

On Tuesday the SC bench of Justices NV Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan unanimously held that there was no merit to consider the curative petitions filed by Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh.

A curative petition is the last judicial resort available for the convicts. They still have the option to file a mercy plea with the President of India. Sharma and Singh had moved a curative petition after a Delhi court issued a death warrant for the four convicts in the case and set January 22 as the date of their execution. The other two death row convicts Akshay and Pawan Gupta have not filed curative petitions.

¡°This is a big day for me. I had been struggling for the last seven years. But the biggest day will be January 22 when they (convicts) will be hanged,¡± said Asha Devi, mother of 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim.

The four convicts are currently lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail where the executions, the first multiple executions in the country will be carried out. Tihar which does not have a hangman has sought the service of an executioner from Uttar Pradesh. Though it is not confirmed yet, Pawan Jallad, a 57-year-old hangman from Meerut is likely to carry out the executions.

The four convicts along with a juvenile and another accused were arrested in December 2012 for the gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student on a moving bus in Delhi. Ram Singh, the driver of the bus on which the heinous crime took place was found dead in his jail cell in 2013 in what the police say was a case of suicide. The juvenile who was tried under the Juvenile Justice Act was released from jail in December 2015.

The shocking crime which brought millions of Indians on to the streets demanding an end to the rising crimes against women also resulted in changes in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Bill 201 under which a criminal, even if he or she is a minor can be tried as an adult based on the nature of the crime. Though the trial court had pronounced the death penalties back in 2013 the execution of it got dragged for many years as the convicts challenged the verdict in both the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court.