Nirbhaya case: Accused files curative petition

New Delhi, Jan. 9: In a last ditch effort to escape the noose, Vinay Kumar Sharma, one of the four men sentenced to death in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court on Thursday.

A curative petition is the last legal remedy available to a convict. On Tuesday, a Delhi court issued death warrants against Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and said they will be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail. In his curative plea, Vinay said his young age has been erroneously rejected as a mitigating

IN HIS curative plea, Vinay said his young age has been erroneously rejected as a mitigating circumstance.

circumstance.

“The petitioner's socioeconomic circumstances, number of family dependants including ailing parents, good conduct in jail and probability of reformation have not been adequately considered leading to gross miscarriage of justice,” the plea said.

It said the court's judgment has relied on factors such as “collective conscience of society” and

“public opinion” in deciding the sentence to be imposed on him and others.

“The impugned judgment is bad in law as subsequent judgments of apex court have definitely changed the law on death sentence in India allowing several convicts similarly placed as him to have their death sentence commuted to life imprisonment,” the plea said.

It said that after pronouncement of the apex court's judgment in 2017 there have been as many as 17 cases involving rape and murder in which various three-judge benches of the top court have commuted the death sentence.

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