Akshay Thakur, one of the four Nirbhaya convicts, today approached the President for mercy soon after President Ram Nath Kovind turned down Vinay Sharma’s request. Pawan Gupta, the fourth and last convict in the case, is yet to file his mercy plea.
Sharma is the second convict to have exhausted this remedy after Mukesh Singh, whose request for pardon was rejected last month.
Under Article 72, the President can grant a pardon or reduce the sentence of a convicted person, particularly in cases involving capital punishment.
After today’s development, none of them can be hanged before February 15 as rules state that a convict must be given 14 days between the rejection of a mercy plea and his execution. All co-convicts have to be hanged together, according to rules.
The other three convicts are still trying to avail other legal remedies available.
On a cold December night in 2012, a 23-year-old paramedical student was raped by six men on a moving bus. After they were done, she was dumped on the road to die. After weeks at India’s top medical facility, the AIIMS, and a Singapore hospital where she was airlifted for treatment, she died on December 29.
Her death had triggered nationwide protests demanding justice for her and changes in law to ensure safety of women.
While one of her rapists, Ram Singh, was found hanging in Delhi’s Tihar jail during trial, the youngest and the most brutal of the group, who was just short of 18 when the crime was committed, was released after three years at a reform home.
The convicts have so far managed to delay their execution, first slated for January 22 this year, by filing mercy petitions one after another. All four were to hang this morning, but just hours before a Delhi court deferred their execution till further orders as Sharma’s plea was pending before the President.
Advocate AP Singh, convicts’ lawyer, also asked the court to adjourn the executions “sine die” saying legal remedies of some of the convicts were yet to be availed.
Vrinda Grover, who was appointed as amicus curiae to assist the court in the case, submits that she has ensured that all the legal remedies available to the convicts are availed without any undue wastage of court’s time.
Grover informed the court that the execution of all the convicts have to be postponed even if the mercy petition of a single convict is pending.
“The sentence is a common sentence, the death warrant is a common warrant. Therefore, these convicts can’t be executed separately as there can’t be a severance of the sentence,” Grover submitted.
Nirbhaya’s parents, who have been run from pillar to post for the last seven years seeking justice for their daughter, are exhausted and dejected.
Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi has criticised the loopholes in the judicial system that allowed the convicts to delay justice. She has questioned the government if the perpetrators of this horrific crime have more rights than the victim.