Nirbhaya case: SC dismisses convict Pawan Gupta's curative plea against death penalty

The Supreme Court of India (SC) dismissed the curative petition of Pawan Kumar Gupta, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, on March 2.

A death warrant has been issued against Pawan for execution on March 3 along with the three other convicts. The 25-year-old convict claimed juvenility to seek commutation of sentence to life imprisonment.

The curative petition was considered by a bench of Justices NV Ramana, Arun Mishra, RF Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

Pawan was the last death row convict in the case to move the apex court with his curative petition — the final legal remedy available to a person.

A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as Nirbhaya (fearless), was gang-raped and assaulted in a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16, 2012. She died a fortnight later at a hospital in Singapore.

The trial court on February 17 issued a fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6.00 am for the four convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta, Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Singh (31).

The mercy petitions of three convicts — Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay — have already been dismissed by the president.

The apex court earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President.

Akshay has not yet challenged the rejection of his mercy petition.

Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case.

The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.

(With inputs from PTI)