I was just 19: Nirbhaya convict files curative petition in Supreme Court days before hanging.

Source – www.indiatoday.in

Days after a court issued the death warrants against all four convicts in 2012 Nirbhaya Delhi gang-rape case, one of the convicts on Thursday filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court.

Convict Vinay Sharma’s lawyer AP Singh said a curative petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the death penalty. Four convicts in the sensational 2012 Nirbhaya Gang rape and murder case will be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail.

In the petition, the lawyer said the SC should have considered that Vinay was only 19 years old at the time of the incident. Young age and socio-economic background should have been considered as mitigating factors.

The SC has commuted death penalty to life imprisonment in 17 other cases of rape and murder, including that of minors. Same relief should be granted to Vinay, the plea mentions.

The Delhi court had earlier issued the death warrants against the four death row convicts — Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a convict and it is generally considered in-chamber.

The Supreme Court had on December 18 dismissed the plea of Akshay seeking review of its decision, saying review petition is not “re-hearing of appeal over and over again” and it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road.

She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

On July 9 last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail here.

A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.