Nirbhaya convicts to be hanged on Friday

ALL the four men convicted in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case will be hanged on Friday (20) morning as scheduled, a Delhi court said on Thursday (19).

The Patiala House Court has dismissed all petitions of the 2012 Delhi gangrape convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh, Vinay Kumar Sharma and Pawan Kumar Gupta — seeking a stay on execution.

The Delhi court had on March 5 issued a fresh death warrant against the four convicts, ordering their execution at 5.30 am on March 20.

The death warrant was issued as the four men had exhausted all the legal remedies available to them.

“No legal remedies are pending as of now. Pawan and Akshay’s second mercy was also not entertained by the President of India,” Public Prosecutor Irfan Ahmad said.

Curative petition of Pawan Gupta has also been rejected.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court refused to entertain a plea of convict Mukesh Singh challenging the Delhi High Court’s order rejecting his claim that he was not in Delhi when the crime took place.

AP Singh, the lawyer for the Nirbhaya convicts, told the Patiala House Court: “Send them to Indo-Pak border, send them to Doklam, but don’t hang them. They are ready to serve the country. I can file an affidavit in this regard.”

The last few days witnessed a lot drama as convict Akshay Thakur’s wife filed for a divorce in a local court in Bihar’s Aurangabad stating that “she does not want to live the life of a widow”.

Earlier, the Delhi court had issued death warrants against the four convicts thrice.

On February 17, the court issued a death warrant against the convicts ordering their execution on March 3.

However, the trial court on March 2, pronounced that the four convicts will not be hanged on the scheduled day as Pawan’s mercy plea was pending before the President.

Prior to that, the Patiala House Court had on January 31 deferred the hanging of four convicts in Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case — scheduled for February 1 — till further orders.

The first death warrant was issued on January 7, ordering the hanging of the Nirbhaya convicts at 7 am on January 22.

The 23-year-old woman, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and assaulted on December 16, 2012, in a moving bus which led to her death.

All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder.

One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case.