New Delhi, 02nd March: Tactics of the Nirbhaya case convicts have worked once again in their favor as they dodged the third execution date, today.
Earlier on Monday, the Supreme Court had dismissed the curative petition of Pawan Gupta, one of the four death row convicts of the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder case. Pawan had requested to convert his death penalty to life imprisonment. After the dismissal, Pawan Gupta filed the only legal option of mercy petition before the President of India.
As the petition is now pending before the President, the Delhi court has stayed the execution of the 4 convicts and deferred the matter for further orders. The Patiala House Court had issued the third death warrant, fixed March 3 as the date of execution.
Asha Devi, mother of 2012 Delhi gang-rape victim was quoted questioning the system. “Why is the court taking so much time to execute its own order to hang the convicts? Repeated postponing of the execution shows the failure of our system. Our entire system supports criminals,” the disappointed mother told the media.
Of the four convicts of Nirbhaya, only Pawan has the only legal option of mercy petition. The remaining three convicts Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh and Akshay Thakur have already used all the options.
(Internet inputs)