‘Playing with fire’: Judge cautions Pawan Gupta’s lawyer on plea to stop hanging

On February 17, Judge Dharmendra Rana had issued the death warrant to execute the four men convicted for raping and killing a 23-year-old woman on her way back home from a movie in 2012.

Delhi judge Dharmendra Rana on Monday reserved his verdict on Delhi gang rape convict Pawan Gupta’s request to stop his hanging because he had petitioned President Ram Nath Kovind to commute his death sentence.

In December 2012, five men and one juvenile had raped and brutalised a young para-medic student in a moving bus in Delhi, leading to nationwide outrage. (File photo)

The judge, however, underlined during the hearing that Pawan Gupta had missed the seven-day deadline that the high court had set last month for the convicts to avail their legal remedies.

“You are playing with fire...You should be cautious,” the judge told Pawan Gupta’s lawyer AP Singh, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

On February 17, Judge Dharmendra Rana had issued the death warrant to execute the four men convicted for raping and killing a 23-year-old woman on her way back home from a movie in 2012. It was the third black warrant to have been issued by the court after it had to cancel the previous two due to pending mercy petitions by the other convicts.

The court had first issued the death warrant against the four convicts on 7 January 2020 and scheduled their execution on January 22. The execution date was postponed twice, first to February 1 and then to March 3.

The judge pulled up lawyer AP Singh on more than one occasion through Monday’s hearing for filing the curative petition and mercy petition at the last moment. Pawan Gupta’s curative petition in the Supreme Court filed last week had been rejected by the Supreme Court just hours earlier.

AP Singh had mentioned the mercy petition to the judge moments after the top court rejected his mercy petition. Standing before Judge Dharmendra Rana later in the afternoon, the lawyer said he had to wait for the curative petition to be dismissed before filing the mercy petition.

The government lawyer opposed AP Singh’s request to cancel the death warrant scheduled to be executed at 6 am tomorrow morning, underlining that the Tihar jail authorities would be ordered to cancel the death warrant by the home ministry as soon as it received the mercy petition.

In between, the central government had also moved the Delhi High Court seeking orders to hang those convicts who have exhausted all their legal remedies separately. The Centre argued that the law does not mandate that all death row convicts in a given case should be executed simultaneously.

The high court had not accepted this view.

In December 2012, five men and one juvenile had raped and brutalised a young para-medic student in a moving bus in Delhi leading to nationwide outrage. The victim later died from the injuries received.

The brutality of the crime had provoked nationwide outrage that brought tens of thousands of people on the streets and led to a major overhaul of laws relating to crimes against women.