Nirbhaya case: Convicts to soon file curative, mercy pleas in SC as last resort

In the Nirbhaya rape case, all the four death-row convicts on Tuesday, December 24 stated that they will soon file both curative and mercy petitions and also pressed the Tihar Jail authorities to withdraw its order directing them to avail the legal remedies in seven days.

Pawan Gupta, Akshay Kumar Singh, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh are facing the gallows for raping and murdering a 23-year-old paramedical student on December 16, 2012. Their reply came on a notice issued by the jail authorities on the directions of the court asking them to avail their remaining legal remedies.

'Let my clients exhaust all the legal resources'

In the reply, filed through their counsel AP Singh, the convicts stated that the curative petition is yet to be filed. If it is dismissed, then the mercy petition will be filed before the President of India.

"Let my clients exhaust all the legal recourses and options available before them. You [Jail authorities] cannot hang them, before these options opted by my four clients, Akshay, Pawan, Vinay and Mukesh," Singh told news agency a news agency.

The convicts should be given options to explore legal remedies before they are hanged, he added. "It is the constitution which has given the rights to the convict to explore all the legal recourses he or she can explore," the convict's reply stated.

All the four convicts had approached the top court against the Delhi High Court order of March 2014 which had confirmed the capital punishment awarded to them by the trial court on September 13, 2013. The Apex court also dismissed their appeals after finding no merit.

Subsequently, three convicts -- Pawan, Vinay and Mukesh -- filed a review petitions which were also dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2018. Fourth convicts Akshay Kumar Singh's review was also dismissed recently. The court while dismissing the appeal termed the incident as "tsunami of shock".

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Besides four convicts, one accused was a minor at the time of the crime and was sent to a reform facility and released after three years, another committed suicide in jail. A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a person following which mercy for computation of death penalty to life imprisonment could be sought from the President of India.

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(With ANI inputs)