Pawan files mercy plea, Dec 16 case hangings deferred

NEW DELHI: A court in Delhi on Monday put on hold till further orders the hangings of four people found guilty of gang-raping and murdering a young paramedical student in 2012, ordering the third such deferment in a keenly watched case after one of the convicts said he was yet to exhaust the legal remedies available to him.

Additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana said the execution, which was scheduled for 6am on Tuesday, cannot be carried out till the disposal of mercy petition of convict Pawan Gupta, who approached the President soon after the Supreme Court rejected his curative plea earlier

in the day.

Though the judge said convicts should be allowed to exhaust all legal options before the execution of a black warrant, he pulled up Pawan’s counsel at the same time for delay in filing appeals to avail remedies.

“Despite stiff resistance from the victim’s side, I am of the opinion that any condemned convict must meet his creator with a grievance in his bosom that the courts of this country has not acted fairly in granting him an opportunity to exhaust his legal remedies.

“...I am of the opinion that the death sentence cannot be executed pending the disposal of the mercy petition of the convict. It is hereby directed that the execution of death warrants against all convicts, scheduled for March 3 at 6am, is deferred till further orders,” Rana said.

Pawan, 25, was the last of the four convicts to file a curative petition before the Supreme Court (on Friday) and a mercy plea before the President (on Monday).

Curative and mercy pleas by co-accused Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) have already been rejected.

While a curative petition is considered the last judicial resort for redressal of grievances, a mercy plea is the last legal remedy for a litigant.

The Union home ministry received Pawan’’s mercy plea and will forward it to President Ram Nath Kovind, news agency PTI quoted unnamed officials as saying on Monday. Later in the day, the Delhi government’s home department recommended for rejection of Pawan’s mercy petition.

A fresh date for the execution is unlikely to be set till the disposal of Pawan’s mercy plea. For the Supreme Court, in its 2014 judgment in the Shatrughan Chauhan v Union of India case, stipulated that there should be a 14-day gap between the rejection of mercy plea by the President and the date of execution.

Also, according to the existing practice, all persons convicted in the same case are executed simultaneously and not separately.

“Once again untruth has won and truth has lost. A crime was committed against my daughter. The court and the government are supporting the convicts. The execution has been postponed for the third time. It shows the lacunae in our system. Till the time mercy is rejected, we will not be satisfied,” said Asha Devi, the victim’s mother.

“The government has to answer to the court that why there was a delay in execution of the convicts,” she said.

The trial court in Delhi, earlier in the day, dismissed the applications by Pawan and Akshay, who sought a stay on the death warrant. But Pawan’s lawyer, AP Singh, pointed out that the convict filed a mercy plea. The court then asked him to come after lunch to argue his case.

“You are playing with fire, you should be cautious,” the court pulled up Singh in the post-lunch hearing. “One wrong move by anybody, and you know the consequences,” the judge said.

In the Supreme Court on Monday, a five-judge bench, headed by Justice NV Ramana, dismissed Pawan’s curative petition and also rejected his application seeking a stay on the execution of death sentence.

“The application for oral hearing is rejected. The application for stay of execution of death sentence is also rejected. We have gone through the curative petition and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out... Hence, the curative petition is dismissed,” said the bench, also comprising Justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

The four convicts brutally assaulted and gang-raped the 23-year-old woman on a moving bus on December 16, 2012, before throwing her out of the vehicle. The woman died about two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore.

Ram Singh (35), the fifth accused in the case, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail in 2013. An underage person, who was convicted by a juvenile justice board in 2015, was released from a correctional home after serving a three-year term.

In September 2013, a fast-track court awarded death penalty to the four convicts. It was upheld by the high court in March 2014 and by the Supreme Court in May 2017.

The first date for the execution (January 22) was postponed to February 1 on the grounds that the convicts were yet to avail all legal remedies. Then, on January 31, the trial court stayed till further orders the execution of the death warrant. On February 17, the court set March 3 as the new date for the hanging of the four convicts.

The way the convicts have filed their petitions has come under criticism, and the victim’s family has said it was a ploy to delay the execution. On January 22, the Union government filed an application in the top court seeking changes in the manner in which the remedies can be exercised by imposing deadline to file curative and mercy pleas.