Delhi gangrape convict Pawan Gupta now files mercy petition

Shortly after the Supreme Court rejected his curative petition, Delhi gangrape convict Pawan Gupta filed a mercy petition with President Ram Nath Kovind.

He was the last among the four convicts to file a curative petition in the case. The three other convicts have already exhausted all their legal remedies.

The four convicts are scheduled to be executed at 6 am on March 3.

Additional Sessions Judge, Patiala House had on January 7, 2020, issued the death warrant against four convicts and scheduled their execution on January 22. The execution date was postponed twice, first to February 1 and then to March 3 due to the convicts not having exhausted their remedies.

The central government had also moved the Delhi high court seeking permission to hang those convicts who have exhausted all their legal remedies separately.

The Centre argued that the law does not mandate that all death row convicts in a given case should be executed simultaneously.

In December 2012, five men and one juvenile had raped and brutalised a young para-medic student in a moving bus in Delhi leading to nationwide outrage. The victim later died from the injuries received. One of the accused committed suicide in Tihar jail during the trial while the juvenile accused was sent to a reform house and released three years later.

The four remaining accused were convicted and sentenced to death by the trial court in 2013. The conviction and sentence were confirmed by the Delhi high court in 2014 and the Supreme Court in May 2017.

Subsequently, the review petitions filed by three convicts, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma against the Supreme Court judgment were dismissed in 2018 and the review petition by Akshay Thakur was dismissed in December 2019.