2012 December gangrape case: SC to hear review plea of death-row convict today

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Dec 17, 2019: The Supreme Court Tuesday will hear the plea filed by one of the four death-row convicts in the December 16, 2012 gangrape case seeking review of its 2017 judgment awarding him death penalty. After the apex court judgment today, a Delhi court will tomorrow hear the convicts before deciding whether to direct Tihar authorities to expedite their execution.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan will hear the review plea filed by Akshay Kumar Singh whose lawyer has questioned in the review petition the capital punishment at a time life is getting “short” due to rising pollution. The court will also hear the plea filed by the victim’s mother against Akshay’s petition.

The Supreme Court has already dismissed, more than a year ago on July 9, 2018, the review pleas filed by Vinay and another two of the convicts, Mukesh and Pawan. A fifth accused, Ram, hanged himself in his cell in Tihar, while the sixth, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was sent to a reform facility.

Meanwhile, the Tihar jail is getting ready to execute the death sentence passed on the convicts, asking Bihar’s Buxar jail for hanging rope. On December 6, the Union Home Ministry sent the Delhi government’s recommendation to reject the mercy plea of Vinay, one of the four convicts, to President Ram Nath Kovind.

The convicts, except Akshay Kumar Singh, can still file curative pleas in the top court against their conviction and death penalty in the case. After exhausting the remedy of filing curative pleas, the convicts can send their mercy pleas to the President. In case the pleas are dismissed, the authorities can seek death warrants from a local court to execute them.

The 23-year-old paramedic student was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

In September 2013, a fast-track court held the four convicts guilty of 13 offences including gangrape, unnatural sexual assault and murder of the woman, and attempt to murder her male friend.

Courtesy: Indianexpress.com