New Delhi: The Nirbhaya convicts were hanged early Friday morning at Tihar jail. However, efforts to stay their execution continued till the wee hours of Friday.
Barely three hours before the scheduled hanging of the convicts, the Supreme Court in a pre-dawn hearing Friday brought down the curtain on the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case by dismissing a plea of one of the four death row convicts against rejection of his second mercy plea by President Ram Nath Kovind.
A bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna rejected the fervent plea of Pawan Gupta that his mercy plea had been wrongly rejected by the president without considering the fact that he was a minor at the time of offence in 2012.
“The consistent view of this court is that scope for review of President’s decision in mercy petitions is very limited,” the bench said.
“What are the grounds on which you are challenging rejection of mercy plea by President…You had relied on school certificate to claim juvenility and are using it again and again. You are asking us to review judgement, your juvenility claim has been rejected by lower court, Delhi High Court and us as well,” the bench said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre and the Delhi Police, objected the juvenility plea of Pawan and said that this had been dealt earlier by all the courts.
The court also did not consider the plea of lawyer AL Singh, appearing for Pawan, that his execution be deferred for one or two days so that he can record his statement in an assault case. Singh alleged that the convict was assaulted in prison by policemen last year.
The bench asked the Centre to consider the fervent request of the lawyer for the convicts that the family members of Pawan and Akshay Singh be allowed to meet them for 5-10 minutes before hanging.
Mehta said that though this is painful, the jail manual does not permit convicts to meet family members just before the hanging.
Agencies