Nirbhaya Rape Case: No Immediate Execution of Death Row Convicts as Supreme Court Junks Plea
A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta came down heavily on the petitioner and said such pleas are turning courts into a joke.
New Delhi, December 13: The Supreme Court on Thursday junked a petition seeking immediate execution of four men who have been sentenced to death in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case of 2012. A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta came down heavily on the petitioner and said such pleas are turning courts into a joke.
“What kind of prayer you are making?” the apex court bench said. “You are making the court a joke,” it added. Seeking guidelines to prescribe strict timelines for speedy execution of death row convicts in rape-cum-murder cases, the petitioner said the delay in the execution of convicts in such cases sets a bad precedent and resulted in increasing incidents crimes against women. Nirbhaya Rape Case: DCW Issues Notice To Tihar Jail Authorities Over Delay In Execution Of Convicts.
The petition also said that in rape-cum-murder cases, the fate of the accused must be decided in a period of eight months. The trail from a lower court to the apex court, including mercy petition before by the President, should be completed in the same period. The petitioner questioned why the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case have not been executed by now despite the dismissal of their review petition by the apex court against the death sentence.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was gangraped 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.
On July 9, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) — seeking review of the apex court verdict which upheld the judgements of the Delhi High Court and the lower court in the case. The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (33), has not filed a review plea in the apex court.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 13, 2018 01:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).