The Supreme Court of India on Monday, July 9, upheld its previous verdict of sentencing capital punishment to three out of four convicts in the horrific Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder incident in 2012. One of the convicts did not file a review petition against the apex court’s May 5, 2017 judgement.
The convicted prisoners are now left with the option of filing a curative plea before the Supreme Court and a mercy petition before the President to prevent the death sentence from being carried out.
A three-judge bench of the Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan upheld the death penalty of Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23). Another convict Akshay Kumar Singh (31) will also have to wait for the President’s mercy along with three others.
Last year on May 5, the Supreme Court had upheld the death penalty pronounced to the four by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.
On December 2012, a 23-year-old student was brutally raped and tortured in Delhi. Thirteen days later, she passed away in a Singapore hospital.
People from all over the country came down to the streets to protest such an inhuman crime. Delhi police arrested all six accused- Ram Singh, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Gupta, Pawan Gupta, Akshay Thakur, and one juvenile.
In 2013, the trial court pronounced the capital punishment for five accused excluding the juvenile who was released in 2015 from a juvenile centre. The Delhi High Court later upheld the punishment before Ram Singh had an unnatural death in the jail.
Facing the furore of public, the government enacted the Juvenile Justice (Amendment) Bill which allows juveniles of 16 years or older to face the trial as adults in heinous crimes like rape and murder.
