Delhi HC rejects Nirbhaya case convict's plea challenging trial court order

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed the plea of Mukesh Singh, one of the four convicts of Nirbhaya case, challenging trial court order which had dismissed his plea seeking quashing of his death penalty claiming he was not in the city when the incident happened on December 16, 2012.

Earlier today, the Delhi HC had reserved its order on the petition filed by Mukesh Singh -- challenging the trial court's order dismissing his plea seeking quashing of death penalty claiming that he was not in the city when the crime was committed.

Advocate Rahul Mehra, the standing counsel of the state, had opposed the plea and said it is a desperate attempt to stall the execution and that we should not fall prey to this attempt and Mukesh application deserved to be dismissed.

"What prevented them to tell about torture if he was facing it in jail. Mukesh could have written a letter to the competent authority about the torture," Mehra submitted.

In his plea, filed through advocate ML Sharma, Mukesh has sought to set aside trial court order passed on March 17, which had dismissed the petition.

The petitioner said that the trial is the outcome of concealment of vital documents by fixing the petitioner in place of actual accused persons which is liable to be examined within the filed evidence on records. A trial court in Delhi had, on Tuesday, also sent the matter to the Bar Council of India for appropriate sensitization observing that the conduct of the counsel for the convict needs to be brought to notice.

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

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 the national capital. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.