No execution of Nirbhaya convicts on January 22: Delhi court

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A Delhi court, on January 16, said that the four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case will not be hanged on January 22 as scheduled earlier.

This comes a day after the Delhi government had informed the same to the Delhi High Court.

A Delhi court had on January 7 said that four convicts in the case will be hanged on January 22, at 7.00 am in Tihar jail.

One of the convicts, Mukesh Singh, had filed a mercy plea on January 14, hours after his curative petition was rejected by the Supreme Court of India (SC).

According to CNN News18, the Patiala House Court has asked Tihar admin to submit status of mercy plea.

On January 15, the Delhi government had told the High Court that the execution has to be postponed in view of the pendency of a mercy petition by one of them.

The Delhi government and Tihar jail authorities had told a bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that under the prison rules, if death sentence has been awarded to more than one person in a case and if one of them moves a mercy plea, the execution of the others too has to be postponed till the plea is decided.

Earlier on January 16, reports had suggested that the Lieutenant Governor had rejected the mercy plea.

A 23-year-old paramedic student 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 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore on December 29, 2012.

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

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.