New Delhi: Pawan Gupta, one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case Friday approached the Supreme Court seeking review of its verdict which dismissed his plea claiming to be a juvenile at the time of commission of the offence.
The apex court had rejected January 20 the plea by Pawan who had challenged the Delhi High Court’s order dismissing his juvenility claim.
Advocate AP Singh, who is representing Pawan in the case, said he has filed a petition on his behalf seeking review of the top court’s January 20 order Friday.
While dismissing the plea, the top court had said there was no ground to interfere with the high court order that rejected Pawan’s plea and his claim was rightly rejected by the trial court as also the high court.
It had said the matter was raised earlier in the review petition before the apex court which rejected plea of juvenility taken by Pawan and another co-accused Vinay Kumar Sharma and that order has attained finality.
Singh had argued that as per his school leaving certificate, he was a minor at the time of the offence and none of the courts, including trial court and high court, ever considered his documents.
The trial court January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the execution of all the four convicts in the case – Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan (25), Vinay (26) and Akshay (31) – in Tihar jail at 6.00am February 1. Earlier, January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.
As of now, only Mukesh has exhausted all his legal remedies including the clemency plea which was dismissed by President Ram Nath Kovind January 17 and the appeal against the rejection was thrown out by the Supreme Court on January 29.
Convict Akshay’s curative petition was dismissed by the top court January 30. Another death row convict Vinay moved mercy plea before President January 29, which is pending.
Singh has also approached the trial court seeking stay on the execution scheduled on February 1, saying the legal remedies of some of the convicts are yet to be availed.
PTI