Delhi: Hanging of four Nirbhaya convicts gets entangled in procedural maze
TNN | Feb 14, 2020, 04.36 AM IST
NEW DELHI: Nearly three years after the Supreme Court sent the Nirbhaya case convicts to the gallows, the noose seems to have got entangled in a procedural maze with lawyers filing petition after petition in various courts since a Delhi trial court fixed January 22 as the date for the convicts’ hanging.
On Thursday, a bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna found themselves dealing with two petitions related to the case. One was filed by the Union government seeking separate hanging of the four convicts — Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur — as and when their mercy petitions were dismissed by the President. The other was a petition by Sharma challenging the President’s rejection of his mercy plea.
The SC reserved its verdict on Sharma’s petition and said it would pronounce judgment on Friday, when it will also hear the counsel for all four death-row convicts on the Centre’s plea for their hangings to be separated. So, no one knows when the death row convicts will be deemed to have exhausted their legal remedies and a finality reached about the date when they will be hanged.
After the SC rejected review and curative petitions of the four convicts, Gupta had filed a plea in Delhi high court claiming to be a juvenile at the time of crime on December 16, 2012. The high court dismissed his plea. His appeal was rejected by Supreme Court as well. Mercy petitions of other three — Singh, Sharma and Thakur — who invoked the President’s mercy powers for commutation of death penalty to life imprisonment, have also been turned down.
The Centre is challenging a Delhi HC order of February 5 declining the plea for the convicts to be hanged separately by de-linking those who have already exhausted all their remedies from those who have not. The HC had set a deadline of 7 days for the convicts to exhaust all options.
The bench will hear this petition on Friday and appointed senior advocate Anjana Prakash Sharma as amicus for Gupta, who was unrepresented. “Otherwise, tomorrow, they will come and seek adjournment saying he is not represented. That appears to be the tactic,” the bench noted.
The SC is aware of the delaying tactics, but can do little except hear the petitions filed through advocates A P Singh and Vrinda Grover as these were within the convicts’ rights. Once the seven-day period granted by the HC got over, Sharma filed a petition in the SC challenging rejection of his mercy plea by the President.
Among many grounds, his counsel claimed the convict suffered from mental illness and was hence unfit for execution, he suffered constant physical torture in jail, there was complete lack of application of mind to various factors by the Union and Delhi governments in recommending to the President to reject his mercy plea and that the President adopted a pick and choose policy to reject his plea when many such pleas were pending with him.
Sharma’s counsel kept repeating his arguments for two hours, leaving Justices Banumathi, Bhushan and Bopanna at the brink of exasperation. Solicitor general Tushar Mehta took just 15 minutes to show the files of the Union home ministry and the Delhi government to point out that each and every aspect and fact narrated in the mercy petition were carefully scrutinised and considered, including Sharma’s family background and economic condition.
He said the Union home minister recommended rejection of the mercy petition saying the case fell in the rarest of the rare category and the crime was a “dastardly and unpardonable act” that shocked the conscience of the nation.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
TNN | Feb 14, 2020, 04.36 AM IST
NEW DELHI: Nearly three years after the Supreme Court sent the Nirbhaya case convicts to the gallows, the noose seems to have got entangled in a procedural maze with lawyers filing petition after petition in various courts since a Delhi trial court fixed January 22 as the date for the convicts’ hanging.
On Thursday, a bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna found themselves dealing with two petitions related to the case. One was filed by the Union government seeking separate hanging of the four convicts — Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur — as and when their mercy petitions were dismissed by the President. The other was a petition by Sharma challenging the President’s rejection of his mercy plea.
The SC reserved its verdict on Sharma’s petition and said it would pronounce judgment on Friday, when it will also hear the counsel for all four death-row convicts on the Centre’s plea for their hangings to be separated. So, no one knows when the death row convicts will be deemed to have exhausted their legal remedies and a finality reached about the date when they will be hanged.
After the SC rejected review and curative petitions of the four convicts, Gupta had filed a plea in Delhi high court claiming to be a juvenile at the time of crime on December 16, 2012. The high court dismissed his plea. His appeal was rejected by Supreme Court as well. Mercy petitions of other three — Singh, Sharma and Thakur — who invoked the President’s mercy powers for commutation of death penalty to life imprisonment, have also been turned down.
The Centre is challenging a Delhi HC order of February 5 declining the plea for the convicts to be hanged separately by de-linking those who have already exhausted all their remedies from those who have not. The HC had set a deadline of 7 days for the convicts to exhaust all options.
The bench will hear this petition on Friday and appointed senior advocate Anjana Prakash Sharma as amicus for Gupta, who was unrepresented. “Otherwise, tomorrow, they will come and seek adjournment saying he is not represented. That appears to be the tactic,” the bench noted.
The SC is aware of the delaying tactics, but can do little except hear the petitions filed through advocates A P Singh and Vrinda Grover as these were within the convicts’ rights. Once the seven-day period granted by the HC got over, Sharma filed a petition in the SC challenging rejection of his mercy plea by the President.
Among many grounds, his counsel claimed the convict suffered from mental illness and was hence unfit for execution, he suffered constant physical torture in jail, there was complete lack of application of mind to various factors by the Union and Delhi governments in recommending to the President to reject his mercy plea and that the President adopted a pick and choose policy to reject his plea when many such pleas were pending with him.
Sharma’s counsel kept repeating his arguments for two hours, leaving Justices Banumathi, Bhushan and Bopanna at the brink of exasperation. Solicitor general Tushar Mehta took just 15 minutes to show the files of the Union home ministry and the Delhi government to point out that each and every aspect and fact narrated in the mercy petition were carefully scrutinised and considered, including Sharma’s family background and economic condition.
He said the Union home minister recommended rejection of the mercy petition saying the case fell in the rarest of the rare category and the crime was a “dastardly and unpardonable act” that shocked the conscience of the nation.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
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