Death warrant put off for third time; as mercy plea rejected, convicts get at least 14 more days to live
A Delhi court on Monday suspended the death warrant issued against four death-row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case till further orders as convict Pawan Kumar Gupta’s advocate told the court that his mercy plea was pending with the President.
However, President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday evening rejected the mercy plea of Pawan.
This for the third time the hanging of the convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan, who are lodged in Tihar Jail — has been deferred. The convicts were scheduled to be hanged till death on Tuesday at 6 am.
According to the Delhi Prison Rules, if a mercy petition is submitted, a 14-day period has to be given to the convict after the dismissal of the mercy plea, for a new death warrant.
“Despite stiff resistance from the victim’s side, I am of the opinion that any condemned convict must not meet his Creator with a grievance in his bosom that the courts of the country have not acted fairly in granting him an opportunity to exhaust his legal remedies… I am of the opinion that the death sentence cannot be executed pending the disposal of the mercy petition of the convict,” said Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana.
Earlier on Monday, Pawan moved a clemency plea before the President shortly after his curative petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court. The curative plea for commuting the death sentence was heard in chamber by a five-judge SC bench. It is the last legal remedy available for a convict to get any reprieve.
In its 6-page order, the judge said, “I have no hesitation in holding that mercy petition is an important constitutional legal principle ‘Ubi jus ubi remedium’, i.E., where there is a right, there is a remedy, I am of the opinion that the application(of Pawan) is very much maintainable.”
Earlier in the day, while it was reserving the order on Pawan’s fresh plea, the judge rapped the convict’s lawyer AP Singh for acting so late in filing the curative and mercy pleas. The court, thereafter, asked him to come post lunch to argue his case.
In the post-lunch hearing, the court pulled up Singh saying, “You are playing with fire, you should be cautious” and added “one wrong move by anybody, and you know the consequences”.
The first date of execution, January 22, was postponed to February 1 by a January 17 court order. Then, the trial court on January 31, stayed, “till further orders” the execution of the four convicts as they had not exhausted all their legal remedies.