VERDICT ON DEC 16 CONVICT’S CURATIVE PLEA TODAY
The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict in the petition filed by one of the four convicts in the 2012 gang rape and murder case, Mukesh, challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by the President.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will pronounce, on Wednesday, its verdict in the petition filed by one of the four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case, Mukesh, challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind.
Another convict Akshay Thakur (31) also filed a curative plea late Tuesday.
President Kovind had rejected Mukesh’s mercy petition on January 17 just four days after it was filed—the fastest decision ever on such a plea.
Senior counsel Anjana Prakash, who represented Mukesh on Tuesday before a three-judge bench led by Justice R Banumathi, challenged the rejection of his request for a presidential pardon.
Mukesh and his three other accomplices, who were convicted for the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in Delhi in 2012, have been sentenced to death.
Earlier this month, a Delhi court had ordered the four of them to be executed on February 1.
Prakash told the bench that the government failed to place all the records of the case before the President who could, therefore, not make an informed decision.
She said documents, including the trial court judgment, were not transmitted to the President, who arrived at his decision without having had an opportunity to examine relevant records.
Prakash added that was kept in solitary confinement and the President was not informed of it. She also cited previous judgments of the court as per which solitary confinement was one of the grounds for commuting death penalty to life imprisonment.
One of the arguments against the petition by Mukesh was that the President was not exercising a judicial function and his decision cannot, therefore, be challenged in a court of law.
Prakash, however, responded by arguing that a death row convict can challenge the manner in which the President exercised his power to grant pardon under Article 72 of the Constitution. She cited judgments of the Supreme Court to that effect. “Execution of a death sentence should also be as per constitutional principles,” Prakash told the court.
She also claimed that Mukesh was sexually abused in jail and his brother, Ram Singh, who was the prime accused in the case, was murdered in the jail. Prakash said that though Mukesh wanted to lodge a police complaint against the same, he was not permitted by the authorities to do so.
The pace at which the President rejected mercy plea was also pointed out by Prakash to allege “non-application of mind”.