Nirbhaya case: SC rejects curative petition of death row convict Pawan Gupta

The Supreme Court Monday dismissed the curative petition filed by Pawan Gupta, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.

A five-judge bench headed by Justice N V Ramana, which considered the curative plea in-chamber, also rejected Pawan's application seeking stay on the execution of death sentence.

"The application for oral hearing is rejected. The application for stay of execution of death sentence is also rejected. We have gone through the curative petition and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out... Hence, the curative petition is dismissed," said the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

 

In his curative plea, Pawan had sought commutation of his death penalty to life imprisonment.

He had also sought a stay on the execution of black warrant issued by the trial court for the hanging.

Later in the day, a trial court deferred till further order the hanging of the four convicts, pending disposal of the mercy petition filed by Pawan.

The trial court had on February 17 issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 am for the four convicts -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) -- in the case.

The mercy petitions of three convicts -- Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay -- have already been dismissed by the President.

The apex court had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President.

Akshay has not yet challenged in the top court the rejection of his mercy petition by the President.

On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as 'Nirbhaya' (fearless), was gang raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died after a fortnight.

Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail days after the trial began in the case.

The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.