Nirbhaya convict files review plea in SC

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 10

Six days before the seventh anniversary of the December 16 Nirbhaya gang-rape case, one of the four convicts — Akshya Kumar Singh (23) — today filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking review of its 2017 verdict upholding the death penalty to all the convicts.

The top court had dismissed the review petitions of other three convicts — Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24) — in July, saying no grounds were made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict. All convicts are presently lodged in the capital’s high security Tihar Jail.

In his review petition filed through advocate AP Singh, Akshay said he should be spared the gallows. “The state must not simply execute people to prove that it is attacking terror or violence against women. It must persistently work towards systematic reforms to bring about change. Executions only kill the criminal, not the crime…,” his review petition read.

Terming death penalty as “cold blooded killing”, he said it did not provide the chance to reformation to convicts. He talked of moral reasons for abolition of death penalty and asserted there was no evidence to show such a punishment had a deterrent value.

It also referred to the observations of former CJI PN Bhagwati that the convicts, hailing from poor background, were more likely to be sent to the gallows.

After review petition, a convict can file a curative plea and can seek mercy from the President.

The 23-year-old paramedic student was brutally gang-raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.

One of the six accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail while the lone juvenile accused was convicted by a juvenile justice board and later released from a reformatory after three years.

Raises Delhi pollution

“Everyone is aware of what is happening in Delhi-NCR with regard to water and air. Life is becoming short, then why death penalty”

— Akshya Kumar in plea