‘Severe head injuries after thrashing inside jail’: Delhi rape convict moves court against cops

A Delhi court has served notice to jail authorities in the national capital after allegations from Delhi gang-rape convict Pawan Gupta that he was thrashed inside the prison. The case will be heard on Thursday.

Pawan has sought registration of FIR against two policemen of the Mandoli jail, claiming that the thrashing he received at the hands of these cops led to severe head injury.

Another death row convict in the case, Mukesh Singh, had moved a plea in the Supreme Court on Friday seeking restoration of all his legal remedies, alleging that his lawyers had misled him.

The plea, filed through advocate M L Sharma, sought a CBI probe into alleged “criminal conspiracy” and “fraud” hatched by the Centre, Delhi government and advocate Vrinda Grover, who is the amicus curiae in the case.

Last week, a trial court in Delhi issued fresh warrants with March 20, 5.30 am, as the date for the execution of the convicts - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

Though the counsel of three of the four convicts sought time from the court to deliberate legal options, additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana observed that there was no statutory bar in issuing the death warrant.

The victim’s family has accused the four convicts of delaying their petitions and wasting the time of courts in order to stall the execution process.

A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ‘Nirbhaya’ (fearless), was gang-raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16, 2012. She had 13 days later at a hospital in Singapore.

Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case.

The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.