Nirbhaya case: Apex court to hear convicts’ plea on Feb 16

The Supreme Court will be next hearing the Nirbhaya gangrape case on February 16, after convicts Vinay and Pawan on Monday sought more time to file their responses before the court.

The apex court in May upheld the order of the Delhi High Court, which had sentenced the four convicts - Akshay, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh - to death.

One of the accused, Ram Singh, committed suicide by hanging himself in the prison, while another accused is serving the maximum sentence of three years in a juvenile home.

Meanwhile, apex court asked one of the four death row convicts in the case to soon file his plea seeking review of its verdict upholding death sentence awarded to him, saying the court “cannot wait” for long.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was informed that one of the four convicts, Akshay Kumar Singh, has not yet filed the plea for review of the apex court’s May 5 last year verdict.

The top court had last year upheld the death penalty to the four convicts - Mukesh (29), Pawan (22), Vinay Sharma (23) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31), saying the “brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature” of the crime could create a “tsunami of shock” to destroy a civilised society.

A 23-year-old paramedic student was gangraped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in South Delhi by a gang of six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out naked. She succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

During the brief hearing on Monday, the court asked advocate AP Singh, who is representing Akshay and two other convicts, as to why review petition has not yet been filed on behalf of Akshay.

Singh told the bench, which also comprised Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, that he has filed review pleas on behalf of convicts Pawan and Vinay Sharma but because of some exigencies in Akshay’s family, he could not file the same for him.

“This matter cannot go on like this. We cannot wait for you to file review petition for long,” the bench observed after which the counsel said he would soon file a review plea.

Supreme Court asks one of the four death row convicts to soon file his plea seeking review of its verdict upholding death sentence awarded to him, saying the court ‘cannot wait’ for long