SC dismisses curative plea of death row convict Akshay in Nirbhaya case

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Thursday dismissed the curative petition of one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case saying “no case is made out”. The top court also rejected convict Akshay Kumar Singh’s plea seeking stay of his execution.

“The application for oral hearing is rejected. The application for stay of execution of death sentence is also rejected,” said the 5-judge bench which heard the plea in-chamber.

“We have gone through the Curative Petitions and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra vs. Ashok Hurra & Another, reported in 2002 (4) SCC 388. Hence, the Curative Petitions are dismissed,” the bench said.

The bench comprised Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

Akshay had filed curative plea in the apex court Wednesday

saying that capital punishment is being awarded by courts as “panacea” in the face of public pressure and public opinion on violence against women.

Curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a person in a court of law.

Akshay said the apex court “in its confidence of handing out the death penalty as ‘proportional’ punishment on the basis of how brutal the crime is, exposes the inconsistency of this court and all other criminal courts in this country that have handed out the death penalty as panacea for public pressure and public opinion on violence against women, despite no evidentiary link between its selective application and reduction in crime”.

He also contended that as many as 17 cases involving rape and murder in which various three judge benches of the apex court have commuted the sentence of death.

Akshay now has the option to move a mercy plea before the President. He was the third convict to move the curative plea after Mukesh Kumar Singh and Vinay Kumar Sharma.