New Delhi: The Supreme Court Monday rejected a review plea of three of the four living adult convicts who were awarded the death sentence in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case. A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan delivered the judgment on the pleas of Mukesh Singh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23).
The apex court said the death row convicts failed to point out “error apparent on the face of record”. The bench also said that these three convicts were heard elaborately during the stage of their appeal against the Delhi High Court’s judgement and no case has been made out by them for review of the apex court’s verdict upholding the death penalty.
The fourth death-row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), has not filed a review petition against the apex court’s May 5, 2017 judgment, which upheld a Delhi High Court ruling confirming the death sentence for the adult convicts.
Soon after the verdict, Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi said that their struggle isn’t over yet. “Justice is getting delayed. It’s affecting other daughters of the society. I request judiciary to tighten their judicial system, serve justice to Nirbhaya by hanging them as soon as possible and help other girls and women,” she said.
The convicts’ counsel had earlier pleaded that the police had implicated the “innocent” persons after failing to arrest the real culprits. It was contended that the death penalty was not the solution as it was against the principle of non-violence.
Further, the convicts were not habitual offenders with a criminal history.
The apex court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case of gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student December 16, 2012 in New Delhi.
The rapists, six in all, had committed the crime on the woman who had boarded the bus with her male friend to go home after watching a movie.
She 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 her injuries December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail in Delhi.
A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board. He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
In its earlier judgment, the Supreme Court had said that the “brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature” of the crime could create a “tsunami of shock” to destroy a civilised society.
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