Nirbhaya's Parents File Plea To Expedite Convicts' Execution

The December 2012 gang-rape and murder victim, Nirbhaya's parents filed a plea seeking transfer of the case to another judge in a Delhi court. The petition also demands the court to direct the Tihar jail authorities to accelerate the execution of the convicts lodged there. The court has taken up the parents' plea and has decided to look into the matter on November 25.

The case hasn't moved forward because the two judges hearing the case have got transferred a while back and the hearing dates are getting adjourned every time. The case has been listed in the special fast track court, set up to hear cases of sexual harassment cases exclusively, of Patiala House Court. However, the court is vacant with no judges appointed there currently.

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The parents in their petition said that they have moved the court because the convicts have exhausted all their legal remedies. However, earlier this month on November 6, one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case of 2012, Vinay Kumar Sharma filed for mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind, confirmed Director General of Tihar Jail, Sandeep Goel to IANS.

“Tihar Jail authorities had informed the Nirbhaya gang-rape case convicts that they have exhausted all legal remedies and are only left with the provision of filing a mercy petition against the death sentence before the President. They had received the notice on October 29,” he said.

It informed the convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24), Vinay Sharma (25) and Akshay Kumar Singh (33) — that a mercy petition is their last legal remedy left to them. However, ML Sharma, the lawyer of one of the convicts, Mukesh, told Indian Express that he will contest the notice in the Supreme Court as he has yet to file a curative petition which he could file in a period of three years since the apex court ordered capital punishment in 2017.

This isn't the first time that Nirbhaya's parents have moved the court to expedite the capital punishment awarded by the Supreme Court to the convicts, in December last year too they had approached the court to fast-track the procedure to hang all four convicts.

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The petition also demands the court to direct the Tihar jail authorities to accelerate the execution of the convicts lodged there. The court has taken up the parents' plea and has decided the matter on November 25.

On May 5, 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for the four convicts of the Nirbhaya gang-rape case. The four men convicted in the Delhi gang-rape on December 12, 2012, had petitioned against the death penalty awarded to them by the high court in 2014. A bench headed by Justice Deepak Misra and consisting of Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan heard the case.

On December 12, 2012, a physiotherapy student named Jyoti Singh aka Nirbhaya exited a South Delhi mall at around 10.30 in the night after watching a movie with a male friend. The male friend and Jyoti took a bus to reach home. The bus had only six people inside, including the driver and conductor, who first beat up the friend and then brutally gang-raped Jyoti in the moving bus. They, then, threw Jyoti out on the road.

Picture credit: IB Times