The Delhi police has asked the Supreme Court to reject the petition filed by Mukesh, one of the convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape case, to review the death penalty awarded to him.
In an open court hearing of the review petition by a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Tuesday, advocate M.L. Sharma, for Mukesh, argued that his client was subjected to torture and forced to incriminate himself in the case.
Countering, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra said the arguments did not make a case for review at all.
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“This court had given them the indulgence of nine months,” Mr. Luthra referred to the marathon hearings held by the Bench before the Supreme Court rejected their appeals and confirmed the death penalty of Mukesh and three of his fellow convicts in the case.
Mr. Luthra said there was not a whisper of complaint about torture in any of the lower courts. In fact, the trial court records were replete with instances of misconduct by the convict.
The counsel for the three other convicts, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Kumar, submitted that the trio would be filing their review petitions shortly. The court agreed to hear them on January 22.
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The court reserved the review petition of Mukesh for judgment.
The 2012 gang rape case spurred the genesis of a stringent anti-rape law.
On May 5, the same Bench had confirmed the death penalty of the four convicts found guilty for the rape and murder of the 23-year-old paramedic student in Delhi.