Nirbhaya's rapists to soon file curative, mercy petitions as last resort

All the four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya rape case on Tuesday stated that they will soon file both the curative and mercy petitions and also pressed the Tihar Jail authorities to withdraw its order directing them to avail the legal remedies in seven days.

The case pertains to rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student by six men on a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012. Pawan Gupta, Akshay Kumar Singh, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh are facing the gallows.

Their reply came on a notice issued by the jail authorities on the directions of the court asking them to avail their remaining legal remedies.

In the reply, filed through their counsel A P Singh, the convicts stated that the curative petition is yet to be filed. If it is dismissed, then the mercy petition will be filed before the President of India.

"Let my clients exhaust all the legal recourses and options available before them. You [Jail authorities] cannot hang them, before these options opted by my four clients, Akshay, Pawan, Vinay and Mukesh," Singh told ANI.

The convicts should be given options to explore legal remedies before they are hanged, he added.

"It is the constitution which has given the rights to the convict to explore all the legal recourses he or she can explore," the convict's reply stated.

All the four convicts had knocked the doors of the apex court against the Delhi High Court order of March 2014 which had confirmed the capital punishment awarded to them by the trial court on September 13, 2013.

The top court also dismissed their appeals after finding no merit. Subsequently, three convicts -- Pawan, Vinay and Mukesh -- filed a review petitions which were also dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2018.

Fourth convicts Akshay Kumar Singh's review was also dismissed recently. The court while dismissing the appeal termed the incident as "tsunami of shock".

Besides four convicts, one accused was a minor at the time of the commission of the crime and was sent to a reform facility and released after three years, another committed suicide in jail.

A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a person following which mercy for computation of death penalty to life imprisonment could be sought from the President of India.