There should be debate on delaying tactics of convicted prisoners: MoS Home Reddy

Union minister G Kishan Reddy on Friday said there must be a debate on how the convicts in heinous crimes continue to delay execution of death penalty by exploring the judicial process even after the Supreme Court upholds their conviction.

His remarks came in the wake of a Delhi court postponing the execution of death warrants of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang grape and murder case till further order.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana passed the order on a plea by the convicts seeking a stay on their execution on Saturday, February 1.

"There must be a debate on how the convicts in heinous crimes, even after Supreme Court upholds their conviction, continue to delay execution of death penalty by exploring the judicial process," Reddy, Union minister of State for Home, told reporters here.

The Delhi court did not agree with the Tihar Jail authorities, which had challenged the application of the three condemned prisoners in the case, seeking a stay on their execution.

The black warrants for execution of the death sentence against Pawan Gupta, Vinay Kumar Sharma, Akshay Kumar and Mukesh Kumar Singh, were issued on January 17.

The convicts' lawyer argued that the rules dictate that when one a convict's plea is pending the others cannot be hanged.

A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known as "Nirbhaya" (the fearless one) was gangraped 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.