Nirbhaya case: SC to hear review plea of a convict on Dec 17

The Supreme Court will hear on December 17 the plea filed by one of the four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case seeking review of its 2017 judgement awarding him death penalty.

A three-judge bench will hear the plea filed by convict Akshay Kumar Singh, whose lawyer has questioned in the review petition the capital punishment at a time life is getting "short" due to rising pollution.

The apex court had on July 9 last year dismissed the review pleas filed by the three other convicts -- Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24) -- in the case saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road.

She succumbed to injuries on December 29 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.