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SC rejects Pawan Gupta’s plea, but hanging of Delhi gangrape convicts could be delayed
In the plea, Gupta has pleaded that his age on the day of offence in 2012 was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him.
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the curative petition filed by Pawan Kumar Gupta, one of the four convicts in the 2012 Delhi gangrape case, challenging the May 2017 Supreme Court verdict confirming his conviction and death sentence.
He was the last among the four convicts to file a curative petition in the case. He can now file his mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind. The three other convicts have already exhausted all their legal remedies.
“We have gone through the curative petition and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parametres indicated in the decision of this court in Rupa Ashok Hurra vs. Ashok Hurra”, the court said in its order.
A curative petition is the last judicial resort available for redressal of grievances. It is a remedy established by the Supreme Court through its judgment in Rupa Asok Hurra v Ashok Hurra and is decided by the judges in-chamber.
The four convicts are scheduled to be executed on March 3. However, since Gupta is yet to file his mercy petition, there is a chance that the hanging might be postponed.
This is because, as per the existing practice, all convicts in a given case are executed simultaneously and not separately. Hence, even if one of the convicts has not exhausted a legal remedy available to him, the hanging of all the four convicts gets deferred.
Additional Sessions Judge, Patiala House had on January 7, 2020, issued the death warrant against four convicts and scheduled their execution on January 22. The execution date was postponed twice, first to February 1 and then to March 3 due to the convicts not having exhausted their remedies.
The way the petitions are being filed by the convicts has come under criticism from several experts and the Union government, on January 22, filed an application in Supreme Court seeking changes in the manner in which the remedies can be exercised by imposing deadline for death row convicts to file curative and mercy petitions.
The central government had also moved the Delhi high court seeking permission 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 Delhi high court had turned down the plea citing a Supreme Court verdict in an “unfortunate” case where after one convict was executed, the co-accused’s death sentence was commuted to life.
The appeal against the Delhi high court verdict is pending before the Supreme Court.
In December 2012, five men and one juvenile had raped and brutalized a young para-medic student in a moving bus in Delhi leading to nationwide outrage. The victim later died from the injuries received. One of the accused committed suicide in Tihar jail during the trial while the juvenile accused was sent to a reform house and released three years later.
The four remaining accused were convicted and sentenced to death by the trial court in 2013. The conviction and sentence were confirmed by the Delhi high court in 2014 and the Supreme Court in May 2017.
Subsequently, the review petitions filed by three convicts, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma against the Supreme Court judgment were dismissed in 2018 and the review petition by Akshay Thakur was dismissed in December 2019.
The curative petitions filed by two convicts, Mukesh and Vinay were dismissed by the top court on January 14. The curative petition filed by a third convict, Akshay was dismissed on January 30.
After their curative petitions were dismissed, they had filed mercy petitions before the President. President Kovind rejected Mukesh’s mercy petition on January 17 just four days after it was filed. Vinay Sharma’s mercy plea was rejected on February 1 while Akshay’s mercy plea was rejected on February 5.
