Delhi court reserves order on Nirbhaya convict's plea seeking stay on execution

A Delhi court on Monday reserved its order on a petition filed by Pawan Gupta, a death row convict in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, seeking a stay on the execution as his mercy petition is pending before the President.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana reserved the order after hearing arguments from all the sides in the matter.

The four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case -- Vinay Sharma, Akshay Singh Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh -- are scheduled to be hanged at 6 am on March 3.

During the hearing, advocate AP Singh said that he filed the mercy petition before the President of India on behalf of convict Pawan Gupta as soon as he received the information that the convict's curative petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court earlier today.

Singh said that the former Justice (Markandey) Katju has emailed him and stated that he will meet the President of India regarding the mercy petition.

Public prosecutor Irfan Ahmed, on the other hand, opposed the application and contended that this plea is not maintainable.

Judge Dharmendra Rana asked Singh how he could afford to ignore the order of the Delhi High Court, which granted a week's time to the convicts to avail all legal remedied available to them.

"How can this Court ignore it? Once, Delhi High Court had given you seven days' time, it is binding upon me. How do we ignore those instructions?" Judge Rana said expressing displeasure with advocate AP Singh.

The court observed that the defence has already lost the seven days period granted by the High Court.

Lawyer for victim's family, advocate Jitender Jha submitted that that trial court does not have jurisdiction to deal with this situation adding that only the High Court can impose stay as per Section 415 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which deals with the postponement of execution sentence of death in case of appeal to the Supreme Court.

Public Prosecutor Irfan Ahmed said that as per the mandate of prison rule, the President will seek a report from Jail authorities and the execution will be stayed suo moto. He said that the court cannot pass any order at this stage adding that this petition is premature.

Earlier today, the court dismissed an application seeking a stay on the execution of the death warrant but slated to hear a petition afresh after advocate AP Singh informed the court that the mercy petition of convict Pawan Gupta was filed before the President.

President Ram Nath Kovind had on February 5 rejected the mercy petition of convict Akshay Thakur. So far, mercy petitions of Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh have also been rejected.

The case pertains to the gangrape and brutalising 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.