President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday rejected the mercy plea of Pawan Gupta, one of the four Nirbhaya death-row convicts, paving the way for their execution.
The convicts were scheduled to be hanged on March 3 at 6 am. As per law, the convicts can be hanged only 14 days after the rejection of the mercy plea.
Gupta, had on Monday filed a mercy plea before the President of India, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his curative petition.
Pawan is the last death row convict to extinguish all the legal remedies available to a convict. The President had earlier rejected the mercy petitions of Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay.
Pawan had earlier approached the court with a claim of juvenility to seek commutation of the death sentence. In his curative plea before the apex court, he pleaded that he was 16 years and two months old on the day of the offence as per his school certificates. He further submitted that the State had conveniently suppressed this crucial information throughout the trial.
A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ”Nirbhaya”, was gang-raped and savagely assaulted on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died of her injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.
Six people, including the four convicts, Ram Singh and a juvenile — were named as accused.
The trial of the five adult men began in a special fast-track court in March 2013.
Ram Singh, the prime accused, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in TihaHyderabad’sr jail days after the trial began. The juvenile, who was said to be the most brutal of the attackers, was put in a correctional home for three years.
The juvenile was released in 2015 and sent to an undisclosed location amid concerns over a threat to his life. He, when released, was 20 years old.
The trial of the four adults began in a special fast-track court in March 2013 and they were sentenced to death in September 2013 by the trial court.