New Delhi: The Supreme Court dismissed Thursday the curative petition of one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case saying ‘no case is made out’. The top court also rejected convict Akshay Kumar Singh’s plea seeking stay of his execution.
“The application for oral hearing is rejected. The application for stay of execution of death sentence is also rejected,” said the five-judge bench comprising NV Ramana, Arun Mishra, RF Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, which heard the plea in-chamber.
“We have gone through the Curative Petitions and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra vs. Ashok Hurra & Another, reported in 2002 (4) SCC 388. Hence, the Curative Petitions are dismissed,” the bench said.
Akshay had filed curative plea in the apex court Wednesday saying that capital punishment is being awarded by courts as ‘panacea’ in the face of public pressure and public opinion on violence against women.
Curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a person in a court of law.
Akshay said the apex court ‘in its confidence of handing out the death penalty as proportional punishment on the basis of how brutal the crime is, exposes the inconsistency of this court and all other criminal courts in this country that have handed out the death penalty as panacea for public pressure and public opinion on violence against women, despite no evidentiary link between its selective application and reduction in crime’.
Akshay also contended that 17 cases involving rape and murder in which various three judge benches of the apex court have commuted the sentence of death.
Akshay now has the option to move a mercy plea before the President. He was the third convict to move the curative plea after Mukesh Kumar Singh and Vinay Kumar Sharma.
Curative petitions filed by Vinay and Mukesh in the case have already been dismissed by the apex court. The fourth convict, Pawan Gupta, has not filed the curative petition, which he still can if he chooses.
The trial court January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the execution of all the four convicts in the case – Mukesh (32), Pawan (25), Vinay (26) and Akshay (31) – in Tihar jail at 6.00 am February 1. Earlier, January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.
As of now only Mukesh has exhausted all his legal remedies including the clemency plea which was dismissed by President Ram Nath Kovind on January 17 and the appeal against the rejection was thrown out by the Supreme Court, Wednesday.
In a separate development, earlier in the day, another convict Vinay moved a Delhi court seeking stay on the February 1, execution.
Vinay along with three co-accused of the six men had tortured the Delhi student December 16, 2012 in the most inhuman manner that led to her death a month after, was issued death warrant this month.
Additional Sessions Judge AK Jain has kept the matter for hearing post lunch.
The application filed by defence advocate AP Singh sought the court’s direction to the Tihar Jail authorities to stay the execution of the convicts until the determination of the mercy petition and the other legal remedies.
Agencies
