A Delhi court on Tuesday rejected the plea of Mukesh Singh, one of the four death row convicts in the December 16, 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, seeking quashing of his death penalty claiming that he was not in Delhi on the day of the incident.
In his plea, Mukesh said he was arrested from Rajasthan and brought to Delhi on December 17, 2012, and was not present in the city on December 16, when the crime took place.
Also read: Nirbhaya case | Delayed execution of convicts
The plea also alleged that Mukesh was tortured in Tihar jail.
The public prosecutor told Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana that Mukesh’s plea was frivolous and a tactic to delay the hanging on March 20.
The judge asked the Bar Council of India to give appropriate sensitisation exercise to Mukesh’s counsel M.L. Sharma. “The court is constrained to express its anguish regarding the callous manner in which the application has been moved. It is well-known that courts are overburdened. The duty to deliver justice expeditiously becomes more onerous when the court is dealing with the case of a death row convict, when one wrong decision would lead to fatal consequences. Therefore, the expectations of assistance from the Bar is more enhanced and intense... There cannot be any quarrel with the proposition that an advocate, to the best of his capabilities, is duty-bound to represent the case of his client before the court. However, the duty cannot be extended to the extent of procuring relief for the client by resorting to all kinds of schemes and stratagems,” the court said in its order.
On March 5, a trial court issued fresh warrants, with March 20 at 5.30 a.m., as the date for the execution of Mukesh Singh, 32, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, and Akshay Kumar Singh, 31.
In another development, the National Human Rights Commission dismissed a plea by the mother of Mukesh Singh seeking its intervention to prevent the death sentence being carried out.
In a statement, the NHRC said Ram Bai wanted the commission to “prevent the unlawful execution of her son Mukesh Singh” on Friday.
Her complaint said all the men convicted of the gang-rape and murder had been falsely implicated and their execution, as ordered by the courts, would be a miscarriage of justice. “The matter is outside the purview of the commission. The complaint is therefore dismissed,” the NHRC said.
Meanwhile, Akshay’s wife filed a divorce petition in a court in Aurangabad district in northeastern Bihar.
“My husband is a convict in the Nirbhaya case but he is innocent… Now, I want to be legally divorced from him before he is hanged as I don’t want to live the life of a widow,” Punita Devi said in her petition filed at a family court. The court has fixed March 19 as the next date of hearing.
