7 Years After Nirbhaya Died, 4 Convicts To Hang On January 22

Four convicts in the sensational 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case will be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail, a Delhi court said on Tuesday.

The order was pronounced by Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora, who issued the death warrants against the four death row convicts — Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

During the hearing, the prosecution said there was no application pending before any court or the President right now by any of the convicts and the review petition of all the convicts was dismissed by the Supreme Court.

While urging the court to issue the death warrants, the prosecution said, “In between issuance and execution of death warrants of the convicts, if they want to file curative petitions they can do so.”

The counsel for two of the convicts – Mukesh and Vinay – said they were in the process of filing curative petitions in the Supreme Court.

The trial court had earlier directed Tihar Jail authorities to seek, within a week, a response from the four death row convicts as to whether they were filing mercy pleas against their executions with the President of India.

It was hearing the applications moved by Nirbhaya’s parents and the prosecution (Delhi government), seeking issuance of death warrants against the convicts.

The Supreme Court, on December 18, had dismissed the plea by Akshay seeking a review of its decision, saying a review petition is not (about) “re-hearing of appeal over and over again” and it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang raped 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.

On July 9 last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail in New Delhi.

A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

The top court, in its 2017 verdict, had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.