 seeking a stay on the execution.){kind=link}
Mother of Mukesh Kumar, one of the four 2012 death-row Nirbhaya death-row convicts, on Tuesday approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking a stay on the execution.
The four convicts are slated to be hanged on March 20 at 5:30 am.
Advocate AP Singh appealed the NHRC on behalf of Mukesh’s mother seeking a stay on March 20 death warrant. The basic premises of the contention is that Mukesh’s brother and another prime accused in the case Ram Singh was allegedly killed in the prison, and now he has a 70-year old mother and a 10-year-old son.
“The probe into the alleged suicide was biased. Yet the state government has not given any compensation to the family of the deceased. Mukesh is the only witness to the incident. If he is executed in a hurry, it will be a miscarriage of justice and a violation of the human rights,” Singh added.
Earlier in the morning, Mukesh Singh had moved a Delhi court seeking quashing of his death sentence on the pretext that he was not present in the national capital when the crime took place on December 16 that year.
In support of his contention, Mukesh had submitted that he was arrested from Rajasthan and brought to Delhi on December 17, 2012, a day after the incident.
Last week, three of the four convicts in the case approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking a stay on the execution of their death sentence, news agency ANI reported.
The three convicts who approached the ICJ are Akshay, Pawan and Vinay.
It had come shortly after the Supreme Court ordered the petition filed by convict Mukesh Singh seeking action against his former lawyer Vrinda Grover to be withdrawn.
Mukesh Singh had also appealed in the Supreme Court seeking restoration of all his legal remedies, alleging that his lawyers had misled him.
The plea moved through advocate ML Sharma, had asked for a CBI probe into alleged “criminal conspiracy” hatched by the Centre along with Delhi government and Vrinda Grover, who was amicus curiae in the case.
Another plea is pending before the Supreme Court challenging a Delhi High Court’s order which said death row convicts cannot be hanged separately, on March 20.
A 23-year-old paramedical student, who came to be known as “Nirbhaya”, was gang-raped and assaulted on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died a fortnight later at a hospital in Singapore.
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.