'Top priority if execution on February 1', SC on Nirbhaya convict's plea challenging mercy petition rejection

The Supreme Court on Monday asked counsel of one of the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder convict - Mukesh Kumar Singh - to approach the registry of the court for an urgent listing of his plea against rejection of mercy petition by the President.

A bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde, noted that a matter is of top priority if somebody is going to be executed on February 1.

Mukesh had, on Saturday, approached the Supreme Court challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by the President of India and sought commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Supreme Court's five-judge bench, headed by Justice NV Ramana, had earlier, dismissed the curative petitions of Mukesh and another death row convict, Vinay Kumar Sharma.

After the dismissal of the curative petition by the Supreme Court, Mukesh had filed a mercy petition before the President of India, who had also rejected the plea.

Mercy petition is the last constitutional recourse that a death row convict can exhaust.

A 23-year-old paramedical student was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus on December 16, 2012, by six men (including a juvenile), in Delhi. One of the accused, out of five adult accused, Ram Singh, had committed suicide in the Tihar jail during the trial of the case.

Apart from Mukesh, three other convicts - Pawan Kumar Gupta, Vinay Kumar Sharma, and Akshay Kumar Singh - are facing the gallows in the matter.