Courts rejects final pleas against hangings

NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed one of the December 16 gang rape convict’s plea challenging the rejection of his second mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind, while a Delhi court rejected the plea of three of the four death-row convicts seeking a stay on their execution scheduled for early Friday morning. Both verdicts that were welcomed by the victim’s mother.

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.

A Supreme Court bench of justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna said no ground was made out in Akshay Kumar’s plea for judicial review of the decision rejecting mercy petition. Kumar had filed the second mercy petition on Wednesday which was rejected by the President on Thursday.

He had filed his first mercy plea on January 29 which was rejected on January 31.

On March 5, a trial court had issued fresh warrants with March 20, 5.30 am, as the date for the execution of the four convicts in the case — Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31).

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.

At the Patiala House court on Thursday, additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana dismissed the plea of Kumar, Gupta and Sharma seeking stay on the death penalty, saying the second mercy plea of one of them was still pending.