Nirbhaya case: Tihar authorities delaying in handing over docs, convicts tell court

An advocate appearing for three of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case moved a Delhi court on Friday alleging that the Tihar jail authorities are not handing over certain documents and this is causing delay in filing their mercy and curative petitions.

A P Singh moved an application alleging that the jail authorities are yet to give the documents which are required to file the mercy petition for Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and curative petitions for Akshay Kumar Singh (31)and Pawan Singh (25).

The plea is likely to be taken up for hearing on Saturday.

The apex court recently dismissed the curative petitions of other two convicts -- Vinay and Mukesh Singh (32).

Mukesh's mercy petition was rejected by the President earlier this month.

The hanging of all four is to take place on February 1 at 6 am according to the court order.

In his petition, the lawyer said he had expressed "an urgent will to file a mercy petition before the relevant authorities and undertook several steps to obtain relevant information to file it".

He said Vinay wanted to attach his personal diary containing 70 pages with the mercy petition and had asked the jail authorities to provide.

However, the diary is yet to be provided and because of this the plea could not be filed, he said.

The counsel said he had also sought some documents of convicts Pawan and Akshay which have not been provided.

The petition sought a direction to jail authorities to provide the documents on "an urgent basis".

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before she was thrown out on the road. She was flown to a hospital in Singapore where she died.