Won’t review death for Dec 16 rapist, rules SC
Four convicts can now file final curative petitions
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the death penalty awarded to one of the four people convicted of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student in the national capital seven years ago, turning down his plea for a review of its 2017 judgment that upheld the capital punishment.
The ruling on the plea by Akshay Kumar Singh (33) meant that the review petitions of all four death row convicts stood dismissed in the top court. The convicts can still file curative petitions, which are considered the last legal recourse in the court and are generally heard in-chamber.
“The review petition is not for rehearing of the appeal on re-appreciation of the evidence over and over again. A party is not entitled to seek review of the judgment merely for the purpose of rehearing of the appeal and a fresh decision,” a three-judge bench said.
The bench, headed by justice R Banumathi and also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna, said there was no “error apparent on the face of the record”, and none of the grounds raised by Singh call for review of the 2017 judgment that upheld the death penalty to the four accused.
Singh, Mukesh Kumar (33),
Pawan Gupta (25) and Vinay Sharma (27) were convicted for brutally assaulting and gang-raping the young woman in a moving bus on December 16, 2012, in New Delhi, before throwing her out of the vehicle.
The crime triggered nationwide outrage, put the spotlight on the issue of women’s safety, and led to stricter anti-rape laws. The woman died about two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore.
The fifth accused in the case, Ram Singh (35), allegedly committed suicide in Delhi’s 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 fasttrack court awarded death penalty to Singh, Kumar, Gupta and Sharma. It was upheld by the high court in March 2014 and by the Supreme Court in May 2017. On July 9, 2018, the top court dismissed the review pleas filed by Kumar, Gupta and Sharma, saying no grounds had been made out by them for the review.
Hours after the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday, a court in
Delhi directed authorities of Tihar Jail, where the convicts are housed, to seek a response within a week from the four men as to whether they would file mercy pleas requesting the President to stay their execution.
Additional sessions judge Satish Kumar Arora commenced the hearing on a Delhi government plea seeking issuance of death warrants of the convicts after the top court ruling, and said he will wait for the copy of the judgment. The Patiala House court then adjourned the hearing for January 7.