Counsellors, defence team of Nirbhaya convicts taking 'advantage' of loopholes in Delhi's law, jail manual: NCW chief

National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Rekha Sharma on Friday accused the counsellors and the defence team of Nirbhaya gangrape convicts of playing with the system and taking 'advantage' of the loopholes in law and jail manual of Delhi.

"The counselors and defence team of #Nirbhaya convicts are playing with the system and taking advantage of loopholes in law and jail manual of Delhi. It is only a delay tactic and giving a lot of mental trauma to parents of #Nirbhaya and every one of us who are standing by them," Sharma tweeted.

"How will people fight for justice seeing these long and tedious procedures? #Delhi government slept with the old jail manual and didn't try to change it when the time was there. How they can advocate women security when their own rules are not in order?" she said in a follow-up tweet.

The NCW chairperson's statements came after the Standing Counsel for Tihar Jail authorities Advocate Rahul Mehra said that the execution of convicts in the 2012 gang-rape case will not take place on January 22.

"It can only take place 14 days after the mercy plea is rejected as we are bound by the rule which says that a notice of 14 days must be provided to the convicts after the rejection of mercy plea," he said.

In a recent development, President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday rejected the mercy petition of the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case convict Mukesh Singh.

The Home Ministry had sent Mukesh's mercy petition to Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday night, sources said.

Earlier, Mukesh had informed the Delhi High Court that his mercy petition is pending before the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi and the President of India and he should be given a minimum 14 days notice between the rejection of his mercy petition and scheduled date of execution.

The Supreme Court had already dismissed curative petitions of the two death row convicts, including Mukesh Singh in the case.

Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh had moved the curative petitions in the top court after a Delhi court issued death warrants in their names for their hanging on January 22. Besides them, two other convicts named Pawan and Akshay were slated to be executed on the same day at 7 am in Tihar Jail.

They were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the national capital on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012.

The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya, had succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment.