Nirbhaya case: Supreme Court rejects curative pleas of two death row convicts

The Supreme Court of India (SC) on January 14 rejected curative petitions filed by two convicts in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case, clearing way for their execution.

A five-judge bench of Justices NV Ramana, Arun Mishra, RF Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan was hearing the pleas.

Curative petitions are decided in-chambers by the judges. It is the last and final legal remedy available to a person.

Mukesh Singh and Vinay Sharma had filed curative petitions in the apex court last week.

Two other death-row convicts, Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25), against whom death warrants have been issued by a Delhi court, have not filed curative petitions.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

A Delhi court has already issued death warrants against the four convicts and said they would be hanged on January 22 at 7.00 am in Tihar jail.

The Supreme Court had in 2017 upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and a trial court.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail.

A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

On July 9, 2018, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by three of the convicts in the case, saying no grounds had been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.