New Delhi: In a last ditched effort, one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, Pawan Gupta, has moved the Supreme Court with a curative petition against the dismissal of his review plea rejecting his juvenility claim.
The top court had on January 31 dismissed his review plea against the rejection of his appeal on January 20.
The review plea was taken up for consideration in-chamber by a bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna and was dismissed.
Pawan’s counsel A P Singh confirmed filing of the curative petition on Tuesday.
While dismissing his appeal on January 20, the top court had said there was no ground to interfere with the Delhi High Court order that rejected Pawan’s similar plea.
The apex court had said that the convict’s claim was rightly rejected by the trial court as also the high court.
It had said the matter was raised earlier in the review plea before the apex court which rejected the claim of juvenility taken by Pawan and another convict Vinay Kumar Sharma and that order has attained finality.
Pawan’s counsel had earlier argued that as per his school-leaving certificate, he was a minor at the time of the offence.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Delhi Police, had said Pawan’s claim of juvenility was considered at each and every judicial forum and it will be a travesty of justice if the convict is allowed to raise the claim of juvenility repeatedly and at this point of time.
The trial court had on March 5 issued fresh black warrants for the execution of all the four convicts in the case Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan (25), Vinay (26) and Akshay (31) in Tihar Jail at 5.30 am on March 20.
All the convicts have exhausted their legal remedies and constitutional remedies with the filing of their mercy petitions, which have been rejected by the President.
Also read: Supreme Court declines 16 December convict Mukesh Singh’s plea to restore legal remedies
1. On one hand, Nirbhaya’s mother is waiting for so long for justice to be done by appropriate punishment to her daughters’ killers and on the other, the death sentence convicts are using loopholes in our judicial system to delay execution of death warrants. 2. One can understand feelings of a death sentence convict. But question is whether even one of these four convicts would express genuine regret for what he or all of them together did before killing an innocent woman like Nirbhaya. 3. I think time has come to reexamine the whole issue: in how many ways a death sentence convict can approach Courts and claim any time that injustice has been done to her or him. 4. Though it is possible to say that it is fundamental right of every citizen to approach the Apex Court, question is this: is there an apparent misuse of our judicial systems to delay the inevitable, which in this case is execution of death warrants? 4. What citizens like me find is that all the four death sentence convicts have been ‘ably’ aided by lawyers but they have not succeeded, though it is true that execution of death warrants has been postponed. 5. It is obvious that Nirbhaya case will be cited in future for delays and what not. One now hopes that all this drama comes to an end and justice is given family of Nirbhaya.