3 Nirbhaya convicts approach ICJ, seeking stay on execution

Three of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape case approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking a stay on the execution of their death sentence.

The three convicts who approached the ICJ are Akshay Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma. The International Court of Justice, sometimes called the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

This comes as the four convicts in the 2012 case -- Vinay, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh -- are scheduled to be hanged at 5:30 am on March 20.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was brutally gang-raped and assaulted by six men in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012 and was thrown out on the road. She succumbed to her injuries at a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.

Ram Singh, one of the six accused in the case, allegedly committed suicide in Delhi's Tihar Jail. A juvenile convict was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

So far, President Ram Nath Kovind has rejected the mercy petitions of all the convicts in the matter. However, a "complete" mercy petition of convict Akshay Singh Thakur has also been filed claiming that the previous one, which was rejected by the President, did not have "complete facts".