December 16 gang rape: Convicts’ lawyers made last-minute attempts to stay the hanging

The four convicts in the December 2012 Delhi rape-and-murder spent a restless night trying to avoid death before they were finally hanged at dawn on Friday Their

The four convicts in the December 2012 Delhi rape-and-murder spent a restless night trying to avoid death before they were finally hanged at dawn on Friday Their lawyer knocked on the doors of the high court and the Supreme Court in the night after a trial court threw out their last attempt to put off the execution.

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At 9pm on Thursday, three of the four convicts—Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma—moved the Delhi high court, challenging an order by the trial court that had earlier in the day rejected their plea for a stay on the execution. The fourth convict was Mukesh Singh.

Their advocate AP Singh, with a battery of lawyers, reached the court where justice Manmohan and justice Sanjeev Narula started hearing the matter at 10pm. The hearing went on past midnight. The victim’s parents were at the hearing, looking tense but confident.

Singh contended that several of the convicts’ pleas were still pending. He said a plea contending that Gupta was a juvenile when the crime was committed was pending adjudication. He also read out excerpts from a book by a former Tihar Jail official who advanced the theory that Ram Singh, one of the six accused of the gang rape and fatal assault of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on December 16, 2012,, may not have taken his own life, as had been claimed.

The judges ruled that it was a little too late in the day to contest the death sentence on the points the convicts had raised. It said that all these points had already been raised in the earlier pleas, which had been rejected by the Supreme Court.

“Three courts have applied their mind. The President has applied his mind. You have to make some case. This is a casual approach. Your clients are going to meet god in some time. Present at least one legal point,” the bench said.

When advocate Singh contended that he was facing problems in filing pleas because of of the shutdown in the wake of Covid-19, the court said: “We are hearing you at 11 in the night. How can you say that the courts are inaccessible?

“You have to understand that the judgment has been passed and the case has attained finality,” the bench told the lawyer .

The judges also faulted the death row convicts for not filing their appeals when they should have.

“The law favours those who take timely action. Someone is playing with the system. There is a gross delay on your part. You are blaming us, the blame lies with you,” the bench said.

Another lawyer, Shams Khawaja, also made submissions for the convicts, arguing that the state had commuted the death sentence of the convict who murdered a former chief minister of Punjab.

The court rejected the plea, “The court is of the view that the applicability of sections 120B {criminal conspiracy} and 34 {furtherance of common intention} of the Indian Penal Code cannot be considered at this belated stage in as much as the judgment of the apex court convicting the four has attained finality”.

Soon after it dismissed the plea, Singh went to the Supreme Court registrar for an urgent mentioning of the matter. Later, at 2.30am, a special hearing was conducted before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court challenging the rejection of the plea by the high court.

“We are not inclined to entertain the plea,” the bench comprising justice R Banumathi, justice Ashok Bhushan and justice AS Bopanna said. Minutes before the hearing at the apex court, Singh staged a sit-in after three of his lawyers were not allowed at the hearing.

Advocate Singh cited the school certificates of Pawan Gupta to claim that he was a juvenile in December 2012, when the crime was committed. But the judges told him that he had already made this argument and it had been rejected.

“We are of the opinion that there is no merit in the case,” justice Bhanumati said, dictating the order after a 45-minute hearing.

“The consistent view of this court is that scope for review of the President’s decision in mercy petitions is very limited,” the bench ruled.

After the rejection, Singh sought permission from the court to allow the convicts’ family to meet them one last time. The court said they could do so if the jail manual permitted such a meeting., Solicitor general Tushar Mehta said prison rules did not permit families to meet convicts just before execution.