As all legal ways exhaust one-by-one for Nirbhaya gangrape and murder convicts, time of their hanging comes closer. Preparations were on in Delhi's Tihar Jail to hang Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur at 6 am on Tuesday (March 3). Pawan Jallad, the hangman who is to carry out capital punishment conducted a dummy execution in Tihar Jail on Monday. The dummy execution was carried out just after the news broke that President Ram Nath Kovind rejected Pawan Gupta's mercy petition. Clock ticks for the convicts and time for their hanging drew closer.
Pawan Gupta got a double blow on Monday as Supreme Court dismissed the curative petition and his mercy plea with the President was rejected.
However, a Delhi court on Monday evening stayed the execution of the convicts till further orders.
Pawan, in the curative plea, had urged the top court to commute his death penalty to life imprisonment, besides seeking a stay on the execution of black warrant issued by the trial court.
Earlier, Pawan Gupta's lawyer argued in Supreme Court that he was a juvenile during the time of the commission of the offence, and the death penalty should not be awarded to him. Singh also sought a stay on the execution of the black warrant, on the hanging, issued by the trial court.
He is the only convict who was yet to exhaust all legal remedies -- curative petition, which is the final legal remedy available, and the filing of the mercy petition before the President.
Speaking to media persons, Singh had said there have been many errors in the previous judgements and he expects through this curative petition those errors are amended. "Our main contention is that on the time of the commission of the offence, Pawan was attending a musical programme", said Singh.
The top court had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the decision of the President to reject their mercy petitions. Akshay is yet to challenge the rejection of his mercy petition.
On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ''Nirbhaya'' (fearless), was gang raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died after a fortnight.
Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail days after the trial began in the case.
The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.
(With agency inputs)
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