Hindustan Times : Mar 02, 2020, 11:33 AM
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has rejected the curative petition filed by Delhi gangrape convict Pawan Gupta. In his curative petition, the 25-year-old had pleaded that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.
In the plea, Gupta had pleaded that his age on the day of offence in 2012 was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him and “the age has not been determined in accordance with the procedures laid down under the Juvenile Justice Act”.
The convicts’ execution has already been deferred on two previous occasions due to the pendency of legal proceedings in the case.
Pawan Gupta was the only one out of the four convicts to have not exhausted all his legal remedies, despite a seven-day deadline granted by the Delhi High Court for the purpose. Gupta hadn’t filed either a curative petition or a mercy petition till Friday and his counsel had argued that he wasn’t aware of the time frame set for doing so.
The four convicts were first supposed to be hanged on January 22 but the execution of the death warrant had to be stayed. The second death warrant set the date of hanging as February 1 but had to be stayed, too, in light of mercy petitions and appeals by one or the other convict.
Finally when a seven-day deadline given to the convicts by Delhi High Court to utilize legal options lapsed, a fresh death warrant was issued on February 17 to hang all the four convicts – Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur at 6 am on March 3.
In the plea, Gupta had pleaded that his age on the day of offence in 2012 was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him and “the age has not been determined in accordance with the procedures laid down under the Juvenile Justice Act”.
The convicts’ execution has already been deferred on two previous occasions due to the pendency of legal proceedings in the case.
Pawan Gupta was the only one out of the four convicts to have not exhausted all his legal remedies, despite a seven-day deadline granted by the Delhi High Court for the purpose. Gupta hadn’t filed either a curative petition or a mercy petition till Friday and his counsel had argued that he wasn’t aware of the time frame set for doing so.
The four convicts were first supposed to be hanged on January 22 but the execution of the death warrant had to be stayed. The second death warrant set the date of hanging as February 1 but had to be stayed, too, in light of mercy petitions and appeals by one or the other convict.
Finally when a seven-day deadline given to the convicts by Delhi High Court to utilize legal options lapsed, a fresh death warrant was issued on February 17 to hang all the four convicts – Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur at 6 am on March 3.