SC rejects plea for immediate execution of 4 death-row convicts in December 16 rape case

On July 9, the Supreme Court dismissed the pleas of three convicts seeking review of its 2017 judgement upholding the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case.

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a petition seeking a direction to immediately execute the four death row convicts in the December 16, 2012 gang rape and murder case. “You want us to go around Delhi and execute these people?...What kind of prayer you are making?,” a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta told the petitioner.

A 23-year-old paramedic student was raped on the night of December 16, 2012 in South Delhi by six persons. While one accused hanged himself in jail, four of the convicts have been awarded death sentence, the fifth - a juvenile- as given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment at a reform facility. (AP File)

“You are making the court a joke,” the court said.

A 23-year-old paramedic student was raped on the night of December 16, 2012, inside a running bus in South Delhi by six persons and brutally assaulted before being thrown out on the road along with her male friend. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

One of the accused, Ram Singh, had hanged himself in jail and another, a juvenile, was convicted of rape and murder. He was given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment at a reform facility.

On July 9, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts -- Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) -- seeking review of its 2017 judgement upholding the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case.

The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (33), has not filed a review plea in the apex court.

During Thursday’s hearing, advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner in the case, told the bench that though the provision of death penalty was there in cases of rape-cum-murder, it was not acting as a deterrent due to delays in execution of such convicts.

“Is death penalty acting as a deterrent? Please do not file cases like this otherwise we will ask the registry not to accept it,” the bench said.

“You want us to go around Delhi and execute these people? Dismissed,” the bench said while rejecting the plea.

The public interest litigation (PIL) had said despite a lapse of more than four-and-a-half months from the date of dismissal of the review petitions of three convicts in Nirbhaya case, the death penalty has not yet been executed.

The plea had said in rape-cum-murder cases, the fate of the accused must be decided in a period of eight months from the lower court to the apex court.

Such delay in execution of death penalty was acting as a bad precedent and had resulted in increasing incidents of rapes being reported on daily basis, it had said.

The fact that the death row convicts had not yet been hanged even after five years of their initial conviction “apparently gives an impression in the minds of the rapists that they would also be harmless if they commit such heinous crimes”, the plea had said.