Nirbhaya's family to seek fresh date for execution of convicts

Advocate Seema Kushwaha, lawyer of the parents of the December 2012 gang-rape and murder victim, on Wednesday said that they are moving an application seeking a fresh date for the execution of the four convicts.

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.

"We are moving a fresh application in Delhi court to fix a fresh date for the execution of the four convicts. All the convicts have exhausted their complete rights. The date which will be fixed now will be the final date," Kushwaha told ANI here.

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.