Holding that the four Nirbhaya case convicts have to be hanged together and not separately, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday set a 7-day deadline for them to avail any remaining remedies but refused to stay a trial court order indefinitely postponing their execution.
The court made it clear that if the four condemned prisoners in the gang-rape and murder case choose not to make any type of petition in seven days from now, the institutions/authorities concerned will deal with the matter, as per the law, without further delay.
At the same time, Justice Suresh Kumar Kait was critical of the delay by the authorities in seeking issuance of the death warrants for the four convicts as also of the "delay tactics" adopted by the prisoners to frustrate the warrants.
The judge said that after the apex court dismissed in 2017 the appeals of the four convicts -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) -- "nobody had bothered" to move the trial court for issuance of death warrants for their execution.
This step was taken only after Akshay's review plea was dismissed by the apex court on December 18 last year, he said.
"All the authorities concerned were sleeping" and waited till December 2019 "for reasons best known to them" to seek issuance of death warrants, the judge said.
The mercy petition of Akshay, meanwhile, was rejected by President Ram Nath Kovind.
The President has rejected Akshay's mercy plea filed a few days ago after his curative plea was dismissed by the Supreme Court, Union Home Ministry officials said.
The President has already rejected the clemency petitions of Mukesh and Vinay filed after their curative petitions were dismissed by the apex court.
Pawan has not filed a curative petition yet. Curative petitions are decided in-chamber and is the last and final legal remedy available to a person. Pawan also has the option of filing a mercy plea.
The Centre and the Delhi government had challenged the trial court's January 31 order staying "till further orders" the execution of all the four convicts who are lodged in Tihar Jail.
The government had contended that the convicts are not to be hanged separately only till the stage of their Special Leave Petition(SLP) before the Supreme Court and thereafter, separate hanging can be done.
The judge said however that since up to the Supreme Court, their fate has been decided by a common order, "I am of the considered opinion that death warrants of all the convicts be executed together and not separately".
Hours after the high court order was pronounced, the Centre and the Delhi government moved the Supreme Court challenging the rejection of their plea.
Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi said she will be happy only on the day when all the convicts are hanged.
"I am satisfied but I will be happy only on the day when all the convicts will be hanged. The court has given them a week's time, we will wait till then. This was the government's appeal and the government will think over it how early could they be hanged," she said.
Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad assured the Lok Sabha that the convicts will be hanged soon.
The culprits are trying to delay punishment which is not justified, he said, as several women MPs across party lines raised the issue of attack on women in various parts of the country.
In its order, the high court said it cannot be disputed that "all convicts have been found to be guilty of a horrible, ghastly, gruesome and heinous offence of rape coupled with a bone chilling murder of a young girl which shocked the conscience of the society at large".
"However, so long as life lasts, so long shall it be the duty and endeavour of the Court to give to the provisions of our Constitution a meaning which will prevent human suffering and degradation.
"Therefore, Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) is as much relevant at the stage of execution of the death sentence as it is in the interregnum between the imposition of that sentence and its execution. The essence of the matter is that all procedure, no matter what the stage, must be fair, just and reasonable," the court said.
"Convict Mukesh cannot be adversely segregated from the similarly placed convicts simply because he has been sincerely and earnestly pursuing his legal remedies."
The court said as per the Prison rules, it was clear that if the appeal or application of one of the convicts is pending, the death sentence of all the convicts shall be postponed till the order on the appeal/application comes.
Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old paramedic student, was 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.
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