Almost five months after it stayed the execution of two of the four convicts in the Delhi gang rape case, the Supreme Court gave identical relief to the two remaining condemned persons on Monday.
A Bench of Justices Ranjana P. Desai and N.V. Ramana stayed the execution of Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur. On March 15, the court stayed the execution of Mukesh and Pawan Gupta. “The execution of Akshay Thakur and Vinay Sharma is stayed until further notice,” Justice Desai observed in the order.
“Extremely fiendish”
All four convicts had approached the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court upheld the death penalty awarded to them.
The High Court had termed the offence “extremely fiendish” and “unparalleled in the history of criminal jurisprudence.”
The 23-year-old paramedic, on the fateful night of December 16, 2012, was brutally assaulted and gang-raped by six persons on a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.
Prime accused dead
Prime accused in the case Ram Singh was found dead in Tihar Jail in March last year and the trial against him was abated.
The sixth accused, the juvenile was on August 31, 2013, convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home by the Juvenile Justice Board.
In their petitions before the Supreme Court, Mukesh and Pawan pleaded that they could not be denied a fair trial “to satisfy the political scenario and personal sympathy.”
