Nirbhaya case: Finding no merit, SC dismisses curative petitions of two convicts
Total Views |
New Delhi, January 14: A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court today dismissed the curative pleas filed by Nirbhaya case convicts Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh, paving the way for their execution on January 22.
The bench of Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, which was hearing the pleas, found no merit in the petitions.
Vinay and Mukesh had moved a curative petition, the last legal remedy available to convicts, in the top court after a Delhi court issued a death warrant in their name and announced January 22 as the date of their execution. Two other convicts Pawan and Akshay are also slated to be executed on the same day at 7am in Delhi's Tihar Jail premises.
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 being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
On July 9, 2018, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict. One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail.
A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term. The top court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.