Bar Council issues notice to Nirbhaya rapists’ counsel AP Singh for absence from court

Bar Council of Delhi on Saturday issued notice to AP Singh, counsel for three Nirbhaya convicts. The council has sought his reply in two weeks in view of the High Court order in the case. Recently, Delhi High Court asked BCD to take action and also imposed Rs 25000 fine on Singh, who allegedly didn't appear before Court despite communication.

Delhi HC fined AP Singh for wasting its time

On December 19, while rejecting the claim of Pawan Kumar Gupta, one of the convicts in Nirbhaya gang-rape case, that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime, Justice Suresh Kait of the Delhi HC also slapped a fine of Rs 25,000 on Gupta’s counsel AP Singh for wasting its time and using delaying tactics. It also asked the Bar Council of Delhi to take action against Singh for filing the affidavit pertaining to the age.

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Fresh death warrants issued

Meanwhile, a Delhi court has issued fresh death warrants for all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case. The court quashed the earlier death warrant which was scheduled for January 22. According to the new death warrant, the four convicts -- Mukesh, Pawan, Akshay, Vinay -- will be hanged on February 1 at 6 am. The judgment comes after the Tihar jail authorities sought the issuance of fresh death warrants against the court convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case.

On Friday, Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi expressed displeasure with the delay in the hanging and said the convicts were getting what they wanted. She appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi "with folded hands" to hang them on January 22, and broke down in an interview as she tore into political parties for using Nirbhaya's death for their own gain.

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Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term. The top court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.

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(With agency inputs)