‘Dismissed’: Supreme Court declines to stop 5.30 am execution of Delhi rape convicts
Delhi 2012 gang-rape: AP Singh, the lawyer of the convicts, had approached the top court’s senior official to seek the late night hearing. A special hearing was held at 2:30 am.
Well past Thursday midnight, three judges of the Supreme Court held a special sitting to hear a petition by one of the four 2012 Delhi gang-rape convicts to stop their execution scheduled to be held a few hours later, at 5.30 am, at Tihar jail. AP Singh, the lawyer of the convicts, had approached the top court’s senior official to seek the late night hearing.
Singh got his request but little else. “We are not inclined to entertain the plea,” the bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna, remarked just 20 minutes into the hearing. Singh cited school certificates of Pawan Gupta to claim that he was a juvenile in December 2012. But the judges told him off, reminding him that he had already made this argument and it had been rejected.
He next asked the judges for a reprieve for the death-row convicts that would not stretch for more than 1-2 days, according to news agency PTI. Just enough time for Pawan Gupta to record his statement to the police in the FIR registered when he was assaulted in jail, Singh told the judges. The judges weren’t impressed.
“We are of the opinion that there is no merit in the case”, Justice Bhanumati said, dictating the order after a 45-minute hearing, according to Live Law . The consistent view of this court is that scope for review of President’s decision in mercy petitions is very limited,” the bench ruled, according to PTI.
This was the second late night hearing held at Singh’s request. Three of the four convicts had approached the Delhi High Court late Thursday evening with a similar request to stop their execution. Justices Manmohan and Sanjeev Narula heard AP Singh and other lawyers for close to 90 minutes but did not find any reason to suspend the death warrant.
Soon after, AP Singh declared that he would approach the top court before the four convicts were taken to the gallows to be hanged, simultaneously at 5.30 pm.
Also read: Delhi gang-rape convicts to hang, rules high court after 90-minute hearing
“I will go to the Supreme Court when I get the copy of the order. I have spoken to the (SC) Registrar. I will go to him,” he told reporters.
AP Singh reached the top court’s official’s residence in central Delhi by 1.30 am to request for a special hearing.
“We are seeking an urgent hearing and stay on the death warrant. We are filing the petition in the Supreme Court… The court is open and working,” he told reporters.
Lawyers for the four convicts had been rushing in and out of courts through the day, right from the one presided by Delhi judge Dharmendra Rana to the Supreme Court’s six-judge bench.
Before the top court closed for the day, the six-judge bench led by Justice NV Ramana had rejected convict Pawan Gupta’s curative petition that claimed he was a juvenile at the time of commission of offence in December 2012. Another bench comprising three judges then took up two other petitions filed by convict Mukesh Singh and rejected them.
Asha Devi, mother of 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim who waited for years to see the men who brutalised her 23-year-old daughter, was confident that the last-minute appeals would be rejected by the Supreme Court. The convicts, she told reporters, had already been given a lot of time and had managed to delay their execution.
“We are also going to the Supreme Court, it will be dismissed there too. Convicts will be hanged this morning,” Asha Devi told reporters before heading to the top court.
Back in Tihar where the four men - Mukesh Singh, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma - will be hanged, jail officers along with the hangman Pawan Jallad have inspected the hanging courtyard late on Thursday one last time before the execution.
The 10 pieces of rope that were brought from Bihar’s Buxar and tied to the beams at the gallows were checked. The rope has been dipped in butter or wax by prisoners of Buxar Jail in a way that it does not decapitate convicts during the hanging.
Executioner Pawan Jallah checked the lever by performing a dummy hanging using a sandbag.
The execution process is expected to be complete before 6.30 am.
