SC rejects Nirbhaya convict Mukesh Singh's plea seeking restoration of legal remedies

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 16

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case convict Mukesh Singh’s plea seeking restoration of all his legal remedies.

Accusing his lawyers of misleading him, Mukesh had requested the top court to negate the orders on his curative and mercy petitions.

However, a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said his petition was not maintainable.

The order paves way for the execution of Mukesh and other three convicts on March 20.

A Delhi court had on March 5 issued fresh date and time i.e. March 20 at 5.30 am for the execution convicts—Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

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

In a new twist in the 2012 Nirbhaya case, Mukesh had on March 6 moved the Supreme Court seeking restoration of all his legal remedies on the ground that he was misled by his lawyers.

In his petition filed through advocate ML Sharma, Mukesh demanded quashing of all orders passed by courts and rejection of his mercy petition by the President since the day his curative petition was dismissed by the top court.

He also sought a CBI probe into alleged criminal conspiracy and fraud by the Centre, the Delhi government and advocate Vrinda Grover – who is amicus curiae in the case.

On Monday, Sharma tried to convince the court which was not impressed by his arguments. 

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta vehemently opposed Sharma’s submissions. “Ms Grover did a great job,” he said countering Sharma’s allegations against her.

Mukesh had alleged that he was compelled to sign various papers under threat of session court orders—which were never issued by the session court—stating that the court has directed her to secure various signed documents from him to file various petitions, including a curative petition, on his behalf in the high court and the Supreme Court in his death sentence case.

The limitation period to file a curative petition was three years from the date of dismissal of the review plea and sought to “restore” the rights available to him and allow him to file curative and mercy petitions till July 2021, he had submitted.

He had contended that the respondents “knowingly and deliberately” for vested and political interests hatched a joint criminal conspiracy against Mukesh Singh and visited Tihar Jail and met the petitioner asking him to sign various documents.