Attempt to frustrate mandate of law: Centre’s lawyer to HC
NEWDELHI: Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on Sunday told the Delhi High Court at a special hearing that there is a deliberate, calculated and well-thought-out design by the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case convicts to “frustrate mandate of law” by getting their execution delayed.
Justice Suresh Kait, after hearing lengthy arguments from both the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) and those on behalf of the convicts, reserved his order. The Centre has sought the setting aside of a trial court order staying the execution of four convicts till further orders.
Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, Additional Solicitor Generals Maninder Acharya and KM Natraj, along with advocate Amit Mahajan, told the court that the convicts whose mercy pleas have been rejected by the President can be hanged, and all of them need not to be hanged together.
Mehta said that the convicts, in a deliberated calculated action, have led to the delay in execution. He said that their appeals and mercy pleas have been rejected showing prompt action by the judiciary and the executive. He said the act was so “ghastly, heinous and abhorrent”, that all the three courts concluded that the convicts deserve death penalty.
Countering Mehta’s arguments, advocate AP Singh — who is representing Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta in the case — said the convicts are being implicated because they are Dalit and come from poor families.
To this the court asked, “How are Gupta and Sharma Dalits?”
Singh said both Ram Singh (the fifth convict who allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail) and Mukesh Singh are Dalits. He also questioned the death of Ram Singh but the court discarded his contentions stating that the person in question was already dead and hence there is no relevance of these arguments at this stage.
“Justice hurried is justice buried,” he said.
Senior advocate Rebecca John and advocate Vrinda Grover, who represented convict Mukesh Singh, said, “Much has been said about the delay being caused by the convicts in the case, but I am just using the remedies entitled under the Constitution of India. Even death row convicts, who are guilty of heinous crimes, have rights under the Indian Constitution. The Centre has woken up yesterday and they are questioning me (the convicts) for the delay. In the last so many years, the Delhi government had not moved the court seeking issuance of death warrant.”
She said the convicts have the right to use their remedies and would use it till their last breath.
She said there is ambiguity with respect to piecemeal execution, and said the Centre had moved the SC seeking changes in an earlier judgment and the matter is sub-judice. She said that the plea is not maintainable.
During the hearing, John also said that with change in circumstances, Mukesh, her client, can file a second mercy petition and cited earlier judgments of the Supreme Court.
On January 7, a city court had fixed January 22 as the date for hanging the four convicts for raping a 23-year-old woman on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi, she died of injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.
The execution date was later changed to February 1 over a legal technicality which mandated that a death-row convict be given 14 days before being executed from the date his mercy plea is rejected by the President.
A city court on January 31 had put the death warrant on hold till further orders.
This is the second time the hanging of the four convicts has been postponed after some of them approached court stating that their mercy petitions are pending and that they cannot be hanged separately.