Nirbhaya case: With hours left for hanging, Pawan Gupta files mercy plea

Pawan Gupta,
one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape-and-murder
case, on Monday filed a mercy plea with President Ram Nath Kovind. The move
came after a five-justice Supreme Court bench rejected his curative petition
earlier on Monday.

Pawan
Gupta’s advocate, A.P. Singh, told a court in the Patiala House Court complex
that his mercy petition had been filed. This court had earlier rejected a plea
seeking a stay on the execution. The plea was filed by Pawan Gupta and Akshay
Singh.

The four
convicts are scheduled to be hanged at 6am on Tuesday.

The mercy
petitions of three convicts—Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay—have already been
dismissed by the president. The Supreme Court had earlier dismissed separate
pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy
petitions by the president. Akshay has yet to challenge the rejection of his
mercy petition.

A five-judge
bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramana, which considered the curative plea
in-chamber, rejected Pawan’s application seeking stay on the execution of death
sentence, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

In his
curative plea, Pawan had sought commutation of his death penalty to life
imprisonment. He had also sought a stay on the execution of black warrant
issued by the trial court for the hanging.

The trial
court had on February 17 issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for
Tuesday at 6am for the four convicts—Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25),
Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31)—in the case.

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.