All 4 Nirbhaya case convicts to be hanged on Friday
NEW DELHI : “Finally the convicts will be hanged. Now I will get peace,” Asha Devi told news agency PTI. Even the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to President’s rejection of Akshay Singh’s mercy plea. No ground made out in Kumar’s plea for judicial review of decision rejecting mercy petition, the apex court said.
With less that o8 hours left for the scheduled hangings of all the four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, Delhi court on Thursday turned down another manoeuvre adopted by the convicts and dismissed an application seeking a stay on their execution on the grounds of pending legal remedies.
The families of the prisoner will not be allowed to witness the executions. All other prisoners will be kept locked till the exercise is over and the bodies removed from the prison.
After the execution, bodies of the four men will remain suspended for half an hour before being taken down or until the Resident Medical Officer certifies that their ‘life is extinct’. This is how the whole saga, for which the entire country awaited with bated breath, is projected to come to an end and justice would be imparted to India’s daughter, Nirbhaya.
The Patiala House Court, which earlier set 5:30 tomorrow as the time of execution for the Nirbhaya convicts, has refused to stay the death warrants issued by it.
The four convicts — Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay (31) — will now be hanged by the noose on Friday, March 20 at 5:30 a.m. for brutally raping and murdering a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, later dubbed as ‘Nirbhaya’, on December 16, 2012.
According to latest update, three of the four death-row convicts have moved the Delhi High Court Thursday evening challenging the trial court order declining to stay their execution scheduled for early morning tomorrow.
The death-row convicts, represented by advocate A.P. Singh, had knocked on the doors of the trial court two days before the execution seeking a stay on their hanging. A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna during today’s hearing said that no ground was made out in Akshay’s plea for judicial review of the decision rejecting mercy petition.
The SC bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna said the convict has exhausted all his remedies and no fresh evidence can be entertained at this level, while adding that the court does not find any merit in the plea, therefore, it cannot be entertained.
Akshay had also filed the second mercy petition on Wednesday which was rejected by the President on Thursday. He had filed his first mercy plea on January 29 which was rejected on January 31.
After the rejection of convicts’ mercy plea, a teared-eye mother of the victim said her daughter’s soul will now rest in peace and she had got justice seven years after the gruesome gangrape and murder that shook the nation.
Meanwhile, the Tihar Jail authorities have started preparing the ground to hang the four men after several dummy runs and officials brushing up on details specified in the jail manual. This is the first time that four men will be hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia’s largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates.
A senior prison official said Pawan Jallad, a hangman from Meerut, reported to the Tihar Jail administration on Tuesday evening to prepare for the exercise.
The execution will take place in the presence of the superintendent, deputy superintendent, medical officer in charge, resident medical officer and the district magistrate or additional district magistrate.
(With Agency Inputs ).
