President Kovind rejects mercy petition of Nirbhaya convict Akshay Thakur

President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday rejected the mercy petition of Akshay Thakur, one of the four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, official sources said.

On February 1, Thakur had filed a mercy petition before the President of India.

Thakur was the third convict in the case to file a mercy petition before the President.

Earlier, Kovind rejected the mercy petitions of convicts Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh.

A Delhi court had earlier issued a death warrant for convicts -- Akshay Thakur, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Sharma -- for their execution on February 1.

Earlier in the day, Delhi High Court granted a week's time to the four death row convicts to avail of all legal remedies available to them.

A single-judge bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait said that the proceedings against the convicts for the execution of death warrant will be initiated after a week.

The High Court observed that according to Delhi Prison Rules, if a mercy petition is submitted, 14-days period has to be given to the convict after the dismissal of the mercy plea.

The death warrant against all four convicts cannot be executed separately, it said.

The case pertains to the gang-rape 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.

One of the five adults accused, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail during the trial of the case.