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Still have legal options before mercy plea to Prez, Dec 16 gang rape convicts tell Tihar officials
New Delhi
New Delhi
Three out of the four death-row convicts in the December 16, 2012, gang rape case on Tuesday told the Tihar jail authorities that they want to avail legal remedies available to them before applying for mercy before the President.
Akshay, Mukesh, Vinay and Pawan were handed the capital punishment for raping and murdering of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012. The girl died of injuries in a Singapore hospital on December 29.
In their replies, filed through lawyer AP Singh, the convicts Pawan, Vinay and Akshay have told the prison authorities that they still have the option of filing a curative petition after their review petitions was dismissed by the Supreme Court. They said that they cannot file a mercy petition before the President till the time all their legal remedies are exhausted.
A curative petition is the last legal resort available for redressal of grievances in court which is normally decided by a judge, in-chamber. It is only in rare cases that such petitions are given an open-court hearing.
The reply came on a December 18 notice by Tihar jail authorities to the convicts stating that they have seven days to file their mercy petition. Last week, a Delhi court had told the jail authorities to send a notice to the convicts telling them about the dismissal of the review plea.
The Supreme Court had last week dismissed the review petition filed by one of the four convicts, Akshay Kumar Singh, after finding no merits in it.
When asked why the curative petitions had not been filed so far for the convicts, advocate AP Singh said, “Financial constraints in the families of both Akshay and Vinay have not permitted the filing of curative petitions.”
Singh said that he would file the curative pleas for all the three after the winter vacations.
In their response to the notice from the jail authorities, the trio has said that they are yet to file the curative petitions which if dismissed; the mercy petitions would be filed. Besides, these legal remedies, a complaint is also pending in a city court seeking to initiate perjury proceedings against the sole eye-witness claiming that he gave motivated statements by taking bribes.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa says that the convicts can avail curative petitions after the dismissal of the review pleas. However, that should be treated as a rarity and not a regular remedy.
“Immediately after the review petitions are dismissed, a curative plea can be filed by the convict. When even the curative plea is dismissed, then a mercy petition can be filed to President of India under article 72 of the Indian Constitution.
“But the law says that the curative petition should be treated as rarity rather than a regular remedy. However, I feel that the curative and mercy petitions filed, if any, should be decided in a time bound manner,” Pahwa said.
Advocate Sanjay Parikh says that there is no time frame to file the curative petitions but it should be done in a time-bound manner.
“There is no time limit for filing the curative petitions. Even there is no time limit for deciding the mercy petitions which is the reason there are so many such pleas pending before the President,” he said.
