A Delhi court has asked the Tihar jail authorities to ascertain from the four 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape death row convicts whether they wanted to file mercy petitions with the President.
The jail authorities have to take their opinions and respond to the court within a week.
Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora passed the direction while hearing a Delhi government plea for issuance of death warrants against them.
Review plea dismissed
The court began hearing the plea after the Supreme Court earlier in the day dismissed the review petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the convicts. Later, the court posted the matter to January 7.
The apex court had last year dismissed the review pleas of the three other convicts — Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma, saying that no grounds were made out by them for review of the judgment upholding their death sentence.
The main accused in the case, Ram Singh, had ended his life by hanging in his prison cell in the Tihar jail in 2013.
The child in conflict with law was convicted by the Juvenile Justice Board. He was later released from a reformation home after remaining there for three years.
Earlier, the Delhi High Court had upheld the lower court judgment to send them to the gallows.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gangr-aped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six people and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She succumbed to injuries on December 29 at a hospital in Singapore.
