Just four days ahead of the scheduled hanging, one of the four death-row convicts, Pawan Kumar Gupta, in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case moved a curative plea in the Supreme Court on Friday claiming juvenility to seek commutation of his death penalty into life imprisonment.
Gupta pleaded that his age on the day of the gangrape-murder offence was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him and “the age has not been determined in accordance with the procedures laid down under the Juvenile Justice Act”.
This information was suppressed by the State throughout the proceedings, he claimed.
Gupta is the lone convict who has not exhausted his legal remedy of filing a curative petition — last legal remedy available — and subsequent mercy plea with the President.
The trial court on February 17 issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 am for the four convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) — in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case. The mercy petitions of three other convicts have already been dismissed.