2012 Delhi gangrape case: Court directs Tihar authorities to file report on status of scheduled execution of convicts

The court was hearing a plea by one of the four convicts—Mukesh—seeking postponements of the date of his execution on the ground that his mercy petition is pending with the President. His lawyer argued that there are subsequent developments that necessitate setting aside the death warrants.

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The development comes a day after the Kejriwal-led government informed the Delhi High Court that the four convicts cannot be executed on January 22 due to a pending mercy plea filed by one of the convicts. Meanwhile, the BJP blamed the Kejriwal-led Delhi government’s negligence behind the delay in the hanging of the convicts.

The four men — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24), Vinay Sharma (25) and Akshay Kumar Singh (33) — were convicted and sentenced to death in September 2013. This was upheld by the High Court in March 2014 and by the Supreme Court in May 2017. The top court also dismissed their pleas seeking review of the confirmation order. They were scheduled to be hanged at Tihar Jail on January 22 at 7 am.

The 23-year-old paramedic student was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

Earlier, in September 2013, a fast-track court held the four convicts guilty of 13 offenses including gangrape, unnatural sexual assault, and murder of the woman, and attempt to murder her male friend. A fifth accused, Ram, hanged himself in his cell in Tihar, while the sixth, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was sent to a reform facility.

(Inputs from PTI)