A Patiala House court on Monday put a stay on the execution of the Nirbhaya case convicts Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh. The 3 convicts and Vinay Sharma were due to be hanged by 6 am on Tuesday, March 3, after President Ram Nath Kovind rejected their mercy petitions but the Delhi court halted the execution till next hearing.
Earlier today, the Supreme Court rejected a curative petition of Pawan Gupta, following which the convict sent a mercy plea to President Ram Nath Kovind. The prosecution said the convicts are exercising all legal options to delay their execution for the crime.
Pawan Gupta also moved the Patiala House court following which the counsel for Nirbhaya’s mother, who has been questioning the undue delay in the hanging to the law, welcomed the end of the legal road for the convicts and hoped they would be finally hanged on Tuesday but that has been postponed.
In another development, a 5-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice NV Ramana refused to involve itself in deciding if the convicts’ organs should be harvested for donors. The bench said organ donation has to be voluntary while dismissing the petition filed by judge MF Saldanha, who had asked for a direction to Tihar Jail authorities to offer the convicts if they wanted to donate their organs upon their execution. The petitioner had also asked the court to consider making it a condition on future executions.
On December 16, 2012, Nirbhaya, a physiotherapy intern, was gang-raped and left to die on a south Delhi thoroughfare by 6 men of whom one was a minor. One of the remaining 5 was found dead in his cell I Tihar Jail. The others – Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh – have a death warrant against them which is executable on March 3. This is the third date for their execution.
