After rejection of curative plea, Nirbhaya rape convict Mukesh submits mercy petition to Tihar
Mukesh, one of the rape convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, has submitted a mercy petition to the Tihar jail authorities. The convict's move towards the last resort comes as the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution on Tuesday while dismissing a curative petition against his conviction and capital punishment.
Mukesh's mercy petition would now be sent to the Delhi government, then the Ministry of Home Affairs and finally the President for review.
The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail as a Delhi court had issued their death warrants on January 7.
A five-judge bench of the apex court, during in-chamber proceedings, rejected the curative petitions filed by Vinay and Mukesh on Tuesday. The five judges unanimously said that there was no merit in the curative petitions filed by the two convicts, Vinay and Mukesh, on January 9.
The other two convicts, Akshay and Pawan have not filed curative petitions yet.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
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