Nirbhaya Convicts May Not Hang On January 22 Over Mercy Plea, Court Told

Convicts Akshay Thakur Singh, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma were found guilty in 2012 gang-rape.

The execution of the four Nirbhaya case convicts "will surely not take place" on January 22 because of a mercy petition filed by one of them, the Delhi government told the High Court today. But the court refused to set aside the death warrant put out by a trial court judge, saying there was "nothing wrong with it".

Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar, Akshay Kumar Singh and Pawan Gupta are to be hanged next Wednesday at 7 am inside Tihar jail in Delhi. A trial court judge signed a death warrant for the execution, seven years after a young medical student was gang-raped on a moving bus, tortured and killed in December 2012.

Mukesh Singh filed a mercy petition yesterday, which the Delhi government rejected "at lightning speed", according to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. Even after it is rejected, a convict has to be given 14 days' notice before execution, according to Tihar jail officials.

The High Court refused to hear the convict's petition challenging the death warrant, asking him to approach the trial court.

None of the four convicts can be executed on January 22 unless the mercy plea is decided, the court was told.

"The fate of a death convict comes to finality only after his mercy plea is rejected by the President," said lawyer Rahul Mehra, representing the Delhi government.

Mr Mehra told the court that the pattern followed by the convicts to file their mercy pleas separately was a strategy to "frustrate the process of law". After one plea, the government would need to wait for the other convicts to exhaust their mercy pleas as well, he said.

"Then your rule is bad if you cannot take action till all the co-convicts have moved mercy plea. There has been no application of mind. The system is suffering from cancer," said the High Court.

The Supreme Court had on Tuesday dismissed the last of curative pleas, the final legal option before the convicts, filed by Mukesh and Vinay.

Nirbhaya's mother requested President Ram Nath Kovind to summarily reject the mercy petition of Mukesh Singh. "They will be hanged on the decided date, no matter which court they approach," she told reporters.

On January 7, just before the trial court announced the date of hanging, Mukesh Singh's mother had walked up to Nirbhaya's mother and begged for her son's life. "After crying for seven years, I have become a stone. I felt nothing," Nirbhaya's mother later told NDTV.