Nirbhaya Rapists Set To Be Hanged On March 3 At 6 AM As SC Rejects Convict Pawan Gupta's Plea

Update: The convicts won't be hanged on Tuesday morning as a Delhi court has stayed the execution of the four convicts and deferred the matter for further orders.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had dismissed the curative petition filed by Pawan Gupta, the last of the four convicts on death row paving the way for the execution of the four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case.

With this, all four have exhausted their legal remedies. A five-judge bench headed by Justice NV Ramana considered the curative plea in-chamber, also rejected Pawan's application seeking a stay on the execution.

"The application for an oral hearing is rejected. The application far stay of execution of the death sentence is also rejected. The curative petition is dismissed...," said the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra, R. F. Nariman, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

Pawan, in the curative plea, had urged the top court to commute his death penalty to life imprisonment, besides seeking a stay on the execution of the black warrant issued by the trial court.

AP

Advocate AP Singh, representing Kumar, said he was a juvenile during the time of the commission of the offence, and the death penalty should not be awarded to him. Singh also sought a stay on the execution of the black warrant, on the hanging, issued by the trial court.

With the last legal option exhausted Gupta has now filed his mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind. The three other convicts have already exhausted all their legal remedies and have their mercy pleas rejected by the president.

Another convict, Akshay, had last week filed another mercy plea, asserting that the previous one was "incomplete". Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed an application to stay the execution of the convicts which is scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Welcoming the court's decision, Asha Devi, the mother of the victim said: "They have wasted the court's time and tried to subvert the system. Now they will be hanged tomorrow."

AFP

The four men were sentenced to death in 2013 for the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student on a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012. Two other accused in the case, the driver Ram Singh was found dead in jail while the sixth accused who was tried as a minor was released in 2015. The delay execution of the four convicts in one of the most heinous crimes against women recorded in India has been weeks in India's legal system, which allowed the convicts to make a mockery of it.