New Delhi: One of the four death row convicts, Pawan Kumar Gupta, in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case moved a curative plea Friday in the Supreme Court seeking commutation of his death penalty to life imprisonment. He has also sought a stay on the execution of the black warrant issued by the trial court for the hanging.
Gupta, against whom the death warrant has been issued for execution along with three other condemned prisoners March 3, has filed the curative plea saying that the death penalty should not awarded to him, his counsel AP Singh said. He is the lone convict who has not exhausted his legal remedies of filing a curative petition – last legal remedy available to a person – and subsequent mercy plea with the President.
The trial court February 17 issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6.00am for the four convicts – Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) – in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.
The mercy petitions of three convicts – Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay – have already been dismissed by President Ram Nath Kovind.
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 the rejection of his mercy petition.
On the intervening night of December 16 and 17, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ‘Nirbhaya’ (fearless), was gangraped 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. He has been shifted by the police to an unknown destination.
With Gupta filing his curative plea Friday, there is every possibility of that the hanging of the four convicts may be delayed again. It remains to be seen whether the deadline of February 3 can be met by the Tihar Jail authorities.
PTI