E-Paper
Supreme Court seals fate of 2 death-row convicts in Delhi gang rape case
The four men - ordered to be executed by a Delhi judge at 7 am January 22 - can still send a mercy petition to Rashtrapati Bhavan. They can be hanged only after the rejection of their request by the President, who has the power to commute death sentence to life imprisonment.
Five judges of the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected curative petitions filed by two of the four men sentenced to death for the 2012 gang rape of a young paramedic student in a moving bus in national capital Delhi.
The curative petition was the last judicial recourse for the two, Vinay Sharma (26) and Mukesh Kumar (32).
In a single order, the bench led by Justice NV Ramana rejected their requests to stop their execution and hold oral hearing. “We have gone through the curative petitions and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters... Hence, the curative petitions are dismissed,” the five judges ruled.
The four men - ordered to be executed by a Delhi judge at 7 am January 22 - can still send a mercy petition to Rashtrapati Bhavan. They can be hanged only after the rejection of their request by the President, who has the power to commute death sentence to life imprisonment.
“This is a big day for me. I had been struggling for the last seven years,” said the mother of the 23-year-old paramedic who has closely followed the prosecution of her daughter’s tormentors for years. At times, she and her lawyer have intervened with judges when it appeared to her that the case was dragging.
“But the biggest day will be 22nd January when they (four convicts) will be hanged,” she told reporters outside the Supreme Court.
The four were among six people who gang-raped the young woman on the night of 16 December 2012 in south Delhi before throwing her out on the road. She died on December 29 in a Singapore hospital.
The fifth accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail. The sixth was a juvenile and was released from a reformation home after a three-year term.
