Nirbhaya case: Court dismisses pleas of 2 convicts to stay execution; Pawan files mercy plea

A Delhi court Monday dismissed the pleas of two of the four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case which sought stay on the execution of their death warrants, scheduled for Tuesday morning.

The court decided however to hear the lawyer of one of the two convicts, Pawan Kumar Gupta, after it was informed that he has filed a mercy plea before the President after his curative petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court earlier in the day.

Additional Session Judge Dharmender Rana asked Pawan's lawyer, A P Singh, to come post lunch to argue on why stay of execution be granted.

The court dismissed the applications for stay moved by Pawan and co-convict Akshay Kumar Singh.

After the order was passed, Pawan's lawyer informed the court that he has filed a mercy plea before the President and the execution be stayed.

Akshay, in his application for stay, had said that he has filed a fresh mercy petition before the President of India, which is pending.

He contended that his earlier mercy petition which was dismissed by the President did not have complete facts.

Pawan had taken the ground that he has filed a curative petition before the Supreme Court. He had also said that he had an option to file a mercy petition.

Both the convicts told the court further that a number of other petitions are also pending before the Supreme Court and other authorities.

The court had on February 17ordered that the four convicts --Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) -- be hanged on March 3after it issued fresh death warrants, observing that deferring the execution any further would be "sacrilegious" to the rights of the victim for expeditious justice.

It directed that the four men be hanged by neck on March 3 at 6 am until they are dead. This was for the third time that the death warrants were issued by the court against them.

The court had noted that death warrants were earlier issued on January 7 and the execution was later deferred twice, i.e., on January 17 and January 31.

"Now deferring it any further would be sacrilegious to the rights of the victim for expeditious justice," it had said.

The first date of execution, January 22, was postponed to February 1 by a January 17 court order. Then the trial court, on January 31, stayed, "till further orders" the execution of the four convicts as they had not exhausted all their legal remedies.

The court is hearing the applications by Nirbhaya's parents and the Delhi government, seeking fresh death warrants for the convicts after the Supreme Court granted liberty to the authorities to approach the trial court for issuance of fresh date for the execution of these convicts.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as 'Nirbhaya' (fearless), was gang-raped and savagely assaulted on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi. She died of her injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.