All legal remedies of Nirbhaya convicts exhausted; plea in Delhi court seeks fresh death warrant

A plea was on Wednesday moved in a Delhi court seeking fresh death warrant for the execution of the four convicts in the December 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case contending that the convicts have exhausted all the legal remedies.

Additional Session Judge Dharmender Rana issued notice to the convicts seeking their response on the application and slated the matter for hearing at 2 pm tomorrow.

Public prosecutor advocate Irfan Ahmad, appearing for the state, sought the issuance of a fresh date for execution today itself saying that the convicts have exhausted all the legal remedies available to them.

"The only legal remedy available to Pawan Gupta has also been exhausted... As there is no legal remedy left, please issue a fresh date of execution today itself," he said.

This comes after President Ram Nath Kovind, earlier today, rejected the mercy petition of Pawan Gupta, one of the four death row convicts in the case. Gupta was the fourth convict to file his mercy plea.

A Delhi court had on Monday stayed for the third time the death sentence of four convicts in the case observing that they cannot be executed while a mercy petition is pending before the President.

The President has rejected the mercy petition of all the convicts in the case.

However, a "complete" mercy petition of convict Akshay Singh Thakur was recently filed claiming that the previous one, which was rejected by the President on February 5, did not have "complete facts".

Meanwhile, Pawan Gupta's curative petition seeking commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment was also dismissed by the Supreme Court on Monday.

The case pertains to the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in Delhi. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.