There has been a welcoming change in the Nirbhaya’s gangrape judicial battle. Finally, the convicts in the Nirbhaya case will get only one week to exercise all their legal remedies, after which the trial court will begin proceedings for their execution, the Delhi High Court said today.
It has been in response to the Centre’s petition against the indefinite freeze on execution placed by the lower court. However, the judges refused to hang the convicts separately, which was also part of the Centre’s request.
While hearing the case, Justice Suresh Kait mentioned:
“Delhi Prison Rules do not say that if mercy petition of one convict is pending, the execution of the other convicts can take place.”
The court further added:
“Since upto the Supreme Court, their fate has been decided by a common judgment, I am of the opinion that death warrant of all convicts should be executed together and not separately.”
Applauding the High Court decision to set a time limit for the process, Nirbhaya’s mother told the reporters:
“I’m glad that the High Court has set a time limit for the process. The convicts have been delaying it, now it has to done within a week,”
The four accused – Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh, and Akshay Singh – have been convicted for the shocking gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedical student Nirbhaya in Delhi in 2012. They were to be executed on February 1.
But sadly the trial court postponed the execution indefinitely after a second convict, Vinay Sharma, filed a mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind. When his appeal was declined, another convict, Akshay Singh, filed his mercy plea.
Realizing that the convicts were working together to use every possible loophole to delay the execution, the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta asked the execution of the two convicts who exhausted all the legal options be carried out. He said,
“The accused are trying the patience of the nation. Such delays will shake the faith of people in the administration of justice,”
The four convicts, along with two others — one of them a minor — had attacked the gang-raped the young woman and tortured her with an iron rod in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012. After fighting for life for 13 days, she died on December 29 at a hospital in Singapore. The brutality of the attack had outraged the nation bringing thousands on the streets in protest.
One of the assailants, just short of 18 when the crime was committed, was released after spending three years in a reform home. The main accused, Ram Singh, was found hanging in jail.
At IFORHER, we hope authorities won’t delay the hanging of these four convicts any further and would give justice to Nirbhaya and her parents, who have been fighting a 7-year-long legal battle for their daughter.
