Nirbhaya case: Delhi Court Hearing Today On New Date Of Hanging

New Delhi: The Patiala House Court will, at 2.00 pm on Thursday, hear a plea filed by the Tihar Jail authorities to set a fresh date of execution for all the four death row convicts in the horrific Nirbhaya 2012 gang rape and murder case. Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana is scheduled to hear a petition filed by the jail administration to issue fresh death warrants to all the four accused, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay and Pawan Gupta.

With the rejection of the mercy plea of convict Pawan Gupta by the President of India, the four death row convicts have now exhausted all the legal options open to them. The hearing is likely to bring the curtains down on the gruesome Nirbhaya case of December 2012, in which a physiotherapy intern was brutally gangraped and tortured in a moving bus in South Delhi, before being thrown out. The victim died after battling severe internal injuries some days later.

Six accused were convicted in the case and while one of them is said to have committed suicide in prison, another accused, a juvenile, spent three years in a correction home before being released. The remaining four—Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, Akshay and Pawan Gupta, will be executed following the issue of death warrants.

The victim's mother Asha Devi hopes that the case would now come to a closure and that justice would be served. Asha Devi lamented the manner in which the convicts exploited the loopholes in the justice system. Legal experts concurred with her view adding that guidelines related to execution of death convicts needed to be revisited and reframed.