Supreme Court rejects plea for immediate execution of Nirbhaya death-row convicts

Reporters Today:New Delhi, Dec 13

The Supreme Court Thursday dismissed a plea seeking directions for immediate execution of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, saying, “you want us to go around Delhi and execute these people?”.

            Notably, the 23-year-old paramedic student was raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in South Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

            One of the accused Ram Singh had hanged himself in the jail and another, a juvenile, was convicted of rape and murder. He was given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility.

            On July 9, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) — seeking review of its 2017 judgement upholding the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case.

            The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (33), has not filed a review plea in the apex court.