A Delhi court directed Tihar jail authorities on Wednesday to seek within a week response from the four death row convicts in the sensational 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case as to whether they are filing mercy pleas against their executions with the President of India.
The development assumes significance as the Supreme Court today dismissed the plea of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the four convicts, saying review petition is not "re-hearing of appeal over and over again" and it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road.
She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora commenced the hearing on Delhi government's plea seeking issuance of death warrants for executing the convicts just after the apex court verdict, and said that it will wait for the copy of the judgement. "Let order of Supreme Court be officially communicated".
The court adjourned the hearing for January 7.
The lawyer appearing for Nirbhaya's mother said that there was no impediment in issuing death warrants in the case.
Consoling Nirbhaya's crying mother, the judge said, "I have full sympathy with you. I know someone has died but there are their rights too. We are here to listen to you but are also bound by the law."
Crying, she said: "Everywhere we go they (the convicts) say they have legal remedies. What do we have?"
On prosecution's repeated request that the court should pass death warrants, the court said, "The 'law of natural justice' says that the convicts are heard, till the time their remedies are available."
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