Fresh death warrants were issued by a Delhi High Court for March 3 at 6 a.m. against all the four convicts in the December 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case. The notice issued by the High court read “all the convicts to be hanged by the neck until they are dead on March 3, at 6 a.m.”
This latest order was passed by Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana following the pleas by Tihar Jail and the victim’s parents, who were looking for issuance of fresh dates for the hanging of convicts.
This is the third ocassion of the court issuing death warrants against Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31). Earlier, the trial court had issued the first death warrants for January 22, which was later postponed to February 1.
Before this hearing one of the convicts, Mukesh, has asked the court to change advocate Vrinda Grover and the court duly delivered. They replaced Vrinda with legal aid counsel advocate Ravi Qazi to represent Mukesh.
Mr. Qazi was already representing Pawan and he shared that Pawan wanted to move curative and mercy petitions.
Supreme court was presented by a fresh piece of information by convict Akshay’s counsel that in his earlier mercy petition, due to poverty and ignorance, the complete facts could not be brought before the President of India.
All others except Pawan had exhausted the legal remedies available to file a curative petition before the Supreme Court. The President Ram Nath Kovind has also rejected the mercy pleas of Singh, Kumar and Sharma.
