A 23-year-old woman physiotherapist, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was 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 succumbed to injuries on December 29 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
The Delhi court had on March 5 issued a fresh death warrant against the four convicts, ordering their execution at 5.30 am on March 20.
The four convicts in the gangrape case — which triggered massive nationwide outrage in 2012 – have been exploring every legal option one by one to stretch the date of their hanging as much as they can.
The trial court on February 17 issued a fresh death warrant against the four convicts ordering their execution on March 3.
During the hearing, the court observed that 'general anxiety and depression in case of a death row convict is obvious'.
The Delhi High Court had on Wednesday ruled that all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case should exercise their legal remedies within a week.
The court said the death warrant against the four convicts cannot be executed separately as Delhi prison rules do not state that if mercy petition of one convict is pending, the execution of the other convicts can take place.
The Tihar Jail authorities approached the High Court and challenged the trial court’s Friday order which had stayed the execution of the convicts till further orders.
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had rejected one of the convicts Pawan Gupta's claim of being a minor in 2012 when the brutal incident happened.
Akshay Thakur Singh was the third convict to file a curative petition challenging the death penalty after Vinay Sharma and Mukesh.
