Now, Singh would have the option of filing a mercy petition before the President of India. (Photo Credit: File Photo)
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court dismissed the curative petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the convicts in Delhi 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape case, on Thursday. Now, Singh would have the option of filing a mercy petition before the President of India. The development comes a day after the top court rejected the plea of Mukesh Kumar Singh thereby ending all legal remedies for him. On Wednesday, another Nirbhaya convict Vinay Kumar Sharma had also filed mercy petition before the President of India. A Delhi court has issued black warrnat for the hanging of the four death-row convicts - Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur - on February 1. However, they are unlikely to be hanged on that day as three of the four convicts are yet to exhaust their options to challenge the death sentence.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dismissed the plea filed by Nirbhaya convict Mukesh Singh against the rejection of his mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday. While Vinay only has the mercy petition option left, the two other convicts Akshay and Pawan still have options of both mercy pleas and curative petitions. Akshay has already filed his curative plea before the Supreme Court on Wednesday and the top court is scheduled to hear his petition on Thursday.
A convict facing death sentence gets 14 days to meet family, put his affairs in order and for judicial review after the rejection of mercy plea by the President. Vinay, Mukesh, Pawan and Akshay have been sentenced to death for brutally raping and killing a medical student in Delhi in 2012. Another convict, a minor, was sent to a correctional centre and has been released after he serving his sentence. The sixth accused hanged himself to death during the trial.
The 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 she was thrown out on the road. She was flown to a hospital in Singapore where she died.
Meanwhile, a dummy execution of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case was performed at Tihar Jail on Monday, prison officials said. This was the third instance of the jail authorities performing the dummy execution in order to test the equipment which will be used to hang the convicts, they said. The procedure was carried out in the afternoon and will be repeated over the next few days, the officials said, adding that the ropes were procured from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.
The dummies were created using sacks filled with wheat and sand as per the weight of the convicts, a senior jail official said.
