SC to hear Nirbhaya convict's death penalty review plea today

New Delhi, December 16

The Supreme Court (SC) will on Tuesday hear the plea of a convict on the death row in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, seeking the review of the 2017 top court judgement upholding his death penalty.

A Bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan will hear the review plea filed by Akshay Kumar Singh, who through his lawyer AP Singh, sought clemency, citing the depleting air quality and water pollution in the city, which has negatively impacted the life span of the citizens.

The apex court has also allowed the victim’s mother plea, who is opposing review of the death penalty. The top court had already dismissed the review pleas of three other convicts also on death row. They are Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24). The court found no merit in the conducting the review and upheld the capital punishment given by the trial court and confirmed by the Delhi High Court in the case.

Ram Singh, another accused in the case, allegedly committed suicide in the jail. A juvenile accused, convicted by a juvenile justice board, was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

The 23-year-old paramedic student was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a moving bus. Later, she was thrown at an isolated place by the accused. The victim died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. — IANS