'Sinful to execute Nirbhaya convicts when...': Court

The Centre and the Delhi government suffered jolts on Friday in the Nirbhaya case with a trial court refusing to issue fresh death warrants against the four convicts and the Supreme Court not favouring issuing notice to the prisoners on the plea against stay of their execution. 

The first setback came from the apex court which did not heed to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta's fervent request to issue notices to the convicts on the appeal of the Centre and the Delhi government against the February 5 order of the Delhi high court which said that the death row prisoners have to be executed together and not separately.

Hours after the proceedings in the top court, the matter reached the Patiala House district court which trashed the pleas of the Delhi government and Tihar jail authorities seeking issuance of fresh death warrants against the convicts.

"It is criminally sinful to execute the convicts when law permits them to live," Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana said.

"I concur with counsel for convicts that death warrants cannot be executed merely on basis of surmises and conjectures. The applications are bereft of merit," he added

A 3-judge bench of the apex court headed by Justice R Banumathi told Mehta, who was insisting on issuance of notice to the convicts on the appeal by the Centre and the Delhi government, that the high court had granted a week to the convicts on February 5 to avail their remedies.

"The high court has granted them (convicts) one week time to avail all their remedies. This amply protects you," the bench, also comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna, told Mehta.

The bench also said that issuance of notices to the convicts at this stage will further delay the matter.

Mehta argued that convicts were adopting delaying tactics and one of them, Pawan Gupta, has neither filed a curative petition in the apex court nor moved the mercy plea before the President yet.

"No one can be compelled to take remedies," the bench said and posted the matter for hearing on February 11.

The top court told Mehta that it may consider the aspect of whether notice was needed to be issued to these convicts on the next date of hearing.

Mehta told the bench that "nation's patience has been tested enough now" in this case due to delaying tactics of the convicts and the top court would have to lay down law on whether such condemned prisoners can be hanged separately or not.

Dealing with the aspect of delay, the high court in its February 5 verdict had criticised the authorities for delay in seeking issuance of death warrants for the convicts as also of the "delay tactics" adopted by the condemned prisoners.

"All the authorities concerned were sleeping" and waited till December 2019 "for reasons best known to them" to seek issuance of death warrants, the high court had said.

The Delhi government and Tihar jail authorities had moved the trial court for issuance of black warrants two years after the Supreme Court in 2017 had dismissed the review petitions of two of the four convicts against the confirmation of death
penalty.

The trial court had on January 31 stayed "till further orders" execution of the four convicts in the case -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31), who are lodged in Tihar Jail.

Pawan has not yet filed a curative petition -- the last and final legal remedy available to a person which is decided in-chamber. Pawan also has the option of filing a mercy plea.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as 'Nirbhaya' (fearless), was gang-raped and savagely assaulted on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died of her injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore
hospital.

Six people including the four convicts, Ram Singh and a juvenile -- were named as accused.

The trial of the five adult men began in a special fast-track court in March 2013.

Ram Singh, the prime accused, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Tihar jail days after the trial began. The juvenile, who was said to be the most brutal of the attackers, was put in a correctional home for three years.

The juvenile was released in 2015 and sent to an undisclosed location amid concerns over a threat to his life. He, when released, was 20 years old.

Mukesh, Vinay, Akshay and Pawan were sentenced to death in September 2013 by the trial court.