Another Nirbhaya Convict on Death Row Files Curative Petition Before Supreme Court, Execution on Jan 22

The petitions come two days after Delhi's Patiala House Court gave its judgement in the seven-year-long case issuing a death against all the four convicts

New Delhi: Hours after Nirbhaya convict Vinay Sharma filed a curative plea in Supreme Court, a second convict, Mukesh Singh, exercised his final legal remedy on Thursday seeking to revoke the death penalty on the four rape accused. Advocate Vrinda Grover, amicus curiae in the case, filed the petition on Mukesh’ behalf.

The petitions come two days after Delhi’s Patiala House Court gave its judgement in the seven-year-long case issuing a death against all the four convicts. The four facing the gallows – Pawan Kumar Gupta, Akshay Kumar Thakur, Vinay and Mukesh Singh – will be executed on January 22 at 7 AM at Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a convict which is filed after the review plea against the final conviction in a case is dismissed. Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora had given the convicts a time frame of 14 days to use their remaining legal remedies.

The preparations of the execution are underway inside Tihar Jail and a ‘dummy execution’ will soon be carried out in Jail 3, where the Nirbhaya convicts are to be executed on January 22. Notably, the hangman for the same has been summoned from Meerut.

Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old paramedic student, was brutally gang-raped and tortured on the intervening night of December 16 and December 17, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before finally being dumped on the road. She succumbed to her injuries in a Singapore hospital two weeks later on December 29.

Six accused in the case were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. However, one of the convicts, a minor, appeared before the juvenile justice court, while the prime accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide inside Tihar Jail.