Centre can move court for fresh date to hang Nirbhaya convicts: SC
Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com
New Delhi:12.02.2020
The Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted the Centre to seek a fresh date from the trial court for hanging of Nirbhaya case death row convicts whose mercy pleas have been rejected, but the government’s move to expedite their execution appears to have been stalled as one of the four condemned prisoners moved the SC challenging rejection of his mercy plea.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta strenuously explained the modus operandi of the four death row prisoners — Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay — to individually take recourse to legal remedies and mercy pleas one after the other to frustrate the mandate of courts, which concurrently found them guilty of the brutal gang rape-cum-murder of Nirbhaya. He sought permission from the SC to proceed with the execution separately as discretion of mercy of the President was for individuals and not to the group of four concurrently convicted of the heinous crime.
A bench conceded the government’s view that mercy jurisdiction applied individually to condemned prisoners and not as a group prima facie appeared correct, but said it could not ex-parte decide whether the four should be hanged individually and separately or simultaneously.
Noting that none of the four had taken any step during the seven-day period granted to them by the Delhi high court to take available legal recourse, the bench granted liberty to the Centre to move the trial court to obtain a fresh date for execution of the death warrant.
It clarified that pendency of the Centre’s petition in the SC would not preclude the trial court from considering the Centre’s request on its own merit. The SC issued notice to all four convicts and sought their responses on Thursday to the Centre’s petition seeking execution of those whose mercy petitions had been dismissed by the President.
Full report on www.toi.in
Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com
New Delhi:12.02.2020
The Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted the Centre to seek a fresh date from the trial court for hanging of Nirbhaya case death row convicts whose mercy pleas have been rejected, but the government’s move to expedite their execution appears to have been stalled as one of the four condemned prisoners moved the SC challenging rejection of his mercy plea.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta strenuously explained the modus operandi of the four death row prisoners — Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay and Akshay — to individually take recourse to legal remedies and mercy pleas one after the other to frustrate the mandate of courts, which concurrently found them guilty of the brutal gang rape-cum-murder of Nirbhaya. He sought permission from the SC to proceed with the execution separately as discretion of mercy of the President was for individuals and not to the group of four concurrently convicted of the heinous crime.
A bench conceded the government’s view that mercy jurisdiction applied individually to condemned prisoners and not as a group prima facie appeared correct, but said it could not ex-parte decide whether the four should be hanged individually and separately or simultaneously.
Noting that none of the four had taken any step during the seven-day period granted to them by the Delhi high court to take available legal recourse, the bench granted liberty to the Centre to move the trial court to obtain a fresh date for execution of the death warrant.
It clarified that pendency of the Centre’s petition in the SC would not preclude the trial court from considering the Centre’s request on its own merit. The SC issued notice to all four convicts and sought their responses on Thursday to the Centre’s petition seeking execution of those whose mercy petitions had been dismissed by the President.
Full report on www.toi.in
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