NE NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, FEB 29
Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case convicts Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta moved a petition before a local Delhi court seeking their execution -scheduled for March 3– is stayed for a third time on Saturday. The court will hear the plea on Monday, just a day before the execution.
The plea was moved by Akshay Thakur and Pawan Gupta, who have been sentenced to death by hanging along with two others, and it says since Thakur has moved a fresh mercy petition before the president and Gupta has filed a curative petition before the Supreme court, their execution can’t be carried out.
Thakur said his fresh mercy petition carries new facts about his financial status.
Pawan Gupta had filed a curative petition on Friday pleading that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. He is the last convict to have filed a curative petition in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case. SC had rejected curative petitions of the other three convicts in the past.
The court will hear the plea to stay the execution on Monday, a day before the scheduled hanging.
The convicts have been accused along with their counsels of adopting delaying tactics in order to frustrate the law.
Pawan Gupta had earlier refused to file either a curative petition or a mercy petition and even refused to use the services of a court-appointed counsel, but later sprang a surprise with his counsel AP Singh filing the plea.
Gupta didn’t take the legal recourse left to him despite a seven-day deadline granted by the Delhi High Court for convicts to exhaust all their legal options.
The hanging has already been deferred twice- first on January 22 and then on February 1– in light of mercy petitions and appeals by one or the other convict. A third death warrant was issued on February 17 to hang the four convicts- – Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur – at 6 am on March 3 (Tuesday).
