Delhi court postpones execution of death warrants of convicts in Nirbhaya case

A Delhi court yesterday postponed execution of death warrants of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case till further order. Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana passed the order on plea by the convicts seeking a stay on their execution on February 1.

Yesterday, Supreme Court dismissed the plea filed by one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case, Pawan Gupta, seeking review of its order rejecting his juvenility claim. The review plea filed earlier in the day was taken up for consideration in-chamber by a bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna.

The trial court on January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the execution of all the four convicts in the case - Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay in Tihar jail at 6 am on February 1. Earlier, on January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging



date.

Convict Akshay's curative petition was dismissed by the top court on January 30. Another death row convict Vinay moved mercy plea before President on January 29, which is pending. Mukesh has also approached the trial court seeking stay on the execution scheduled on February 1, saying the legal remedies of some of the convicts are yet to be availed.

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 on January 29.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before she was thrown out on the road.