CONVICTS CAN SEEK MERCY FROM PREZ

The convicts in the Dec. 16 gangrape and murder case will hang, the Supreme Court said on Monday, reaffirming the death sentence of three of the four death row convicts and holding that “no grounds” have been made out to review the top court’s decision last year to give them capital punishment.

The curative petition, if filed, would come up before three senior most judges of the apex court and the three judges on the bench which dismissed the review petition on Monday. Before facing the gallows, the convicts can also seek mercy from the President.

Writing the judgment, Justice Bhushan pointed out that during a judgement’s review counsel cannot be permitted to reargue the grounds taken earlier.

“We may observe that submissions which have been raised by counsel before us in this review petition are more or less the submissions which were advanced at the time of hearing of the appeal and this court had already considered the relevant submissions and dealt them in its judgment dated May 5, 2017. This court had cautiously gone into and revisited the entire evidences on record and after being fully satisfied had dismissed the appeal,” the court said.

It said in a review petition the petitioner cannot be allowed to re-argue merits of the case by pointing out certain evidences and materials, which were on the record and were already looked into by the trial court, HC and this court as well.