A day after a Delhi court issued death warrant against the Nirbhaya convicts, Mukesh Singh, one of the four convicts moved a petition in the Supreme Court on Friday seeking restoration of all his legal remedies.
His lawyer ML Sharma alleged that his previous lawyers had misled him into exhausting all his legal remedies too early.
The plea sought a CBI probe into alleged “criminal conspiracy” and “fraud” hatched by the Centre, Delhi government and advocate Vrinda Grover, who is the amicus curiae in the case.
“Petitioner (Mukesh) is a victim of criminal conspiracy and fraud played and hatched jointly by the R-1 (Ministry of Home Affairs), R-2 (Delhi government) and R-3 (Vrinda Grover) and other advocate who appeared in the session court, high court and the Supreme Court in the petitioner’s death warrant case.
“They compelled him to sign various papers under threat of session court order (which was never issued by the session court) stating that court has directed her to secured various signed documents from him to file various petitions, including curative petition, on his behalf in the high court and the Supreme Court in his death sentence case,” the plea said.
The petition contended that the respondents “knowingly and deliberately” for vested and political interests hatched a joint criminal conspiracy against Mukesh Singh and visited Tihar Jail and met the petitioner asking him to sign various documents.
The plea said that they asked him to sign vakalatnama stating that the session court has issued order to get various documents signed by him to file a curative petition for him in all courts.
“Being pressurised/feared due to so-called session court order, the petitioner signed various sets of vakalatnama for her and signed other papers for her. Recently the petitioner came to know that there was no such session court order,” the plea said.
The petition claimed the limitation period to file a curative petition was three years from the date of dismissal of the review plea and sought to “restore” the rights available to him and allow him to file curative and mercy petitions till July 2021.
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 men began in a special fast-track court in March 2013.
Ram Singh, the prime accused, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Tihar 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.
Read full petition: