New Delhi: A Delhi court will hear on Wednesday a plea seeking issuance of death warrants against the four people convicted in the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case.
Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora today deferred the matter till December 18, noting that the review petition of one of the convicts was pending before the Supreme Court for Tuesday.
The court was hearing a plea Nibhaya’s parents seeking to expedite the process to execute the convicts. “At least, I have to wait till the time review petition is pending,” the judge said.
“My view is that once the review is pending before before the SC, let’s wait for the outcome,” the judge said. “Since his (Akshay Kumar) review petition is pending before SC for 17 December, I would adjourn it for 18 December.”
Urging the court to issue death warrants, the prosecution said: “The court can issue death warrant. Nothing prevents court from issuing death warrants.”
During the hearing, the parents of Nirbhaya told the court that the convict were doing delay tactics. Later, the convicts — Akshay, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma — were produced before the court through video conferencing in an in-chamber proceeding and the judge verified their identity.
According to the court souses, Mukesh was not represented by a lawyer today and the judge informed him that in absence of his counsel, then court would appoint a lawyer from him.
The court informed the accused about the next date of hearing and adjourned the matter. The apex court had on 9 July last year dismissed the review pleas filed by the three convicts — Mukesh, Gupta and Sharma — in the case saying, no grounds had been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped on the intervening night of 16-17 December, 2012, inside a running bus in south Delhi by six people and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She succumbed to injuries on 29 December at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide at Tihar Jail in Delhi. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board. He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.