The Delhi’s Patiala House Court on 7 January upheld the death warrants against the four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case while hearing the plea of the Delhi government which requested the issuance of a ‘death warrant’ to hang the four convicts.
The bench headed by Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora affirmed that the four death row convicts in the case will be hanged at 7 AM on 22 January. The bench further confirmed there have been no pending applications of the four convicts either before any court or before the President.
All the review petitions filed by the convicts already stand rejected by the Supreme Court which stated that no grounds have been made out by them for the review. However, the four convicts can still file pleas against the death warrant in the form of a curative plea in the SC as well as a mercy plea before the President. A curative petition is regarded as the last legal recourse available to a convict and it is generally considered in-chamber.
Citing the same, the prosecution said that “In between issuance and execution of death warrants, if the convicts want to file curative petitions they can do so.” Subsequently, the counsel appearing for the two convicts Mukesh and Vinay said that they were already in the process of filing a curative petition in the SC.
In December 2012, the Nirbhaya was brutally gang-raped and severely assaulted inside a moving bus by six persons and was thrown out on the road in South Delhi. On 29 December 2012, she succumbed to injuries at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Singapore. Further, in 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case.
