Nirbhaya gang rape case: SC dismisses pleas, upholds death sentence for convicts
Supreme Court
Three of the four convicts — there were six accused; one hanged himself in jail, the other was a minor — convicted of the gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman who came to be known as Nirbhaya had filed an appeal against the death sentences handed out to them
Supreme Court on Monday rejected the review pleas of three of the four living adult convicts who were awarded the death sentence in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, according to TV reports.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, delivered its verdict on the pleasand said the convicts had failed to point out “error” in the judgement.
Justice Ashok Bhushan authored the judgment on behalf of the three-judge bench. The apex court said there is no question of reopening the case or reconsidering the 2017 verdict.
The Supreme Court had on May 5, 2017 upheld the verdict of the Delhi High Court and the trial court sentencing the four men - Mukesh (29), Pawan Kumar Gupta (22), Vinay Sharma (23) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) to death for raping the woman, fatally wounding her and leaving her to die by the road.
On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old paramedic student in Delhi was gang-raped by five men and a minor boy on a moving bus that she boarded from south Delhi's Mehrauli area along with a friend. After a prolonged battle at a Delhi hospital, she breathed her last after being flown to Singapore for better medical attention.
The horrific incident led to massive protests across the country while thousands of youths in Delhi came out on the streets and braved police action to seek action against the six accused in the Nirbhaya case.
Six people were accused in the case. Of these, Ram Singh committed suicide in jail. The youngest accused was reportedly days short of turning 18 on the day of the crime, and was sent to a juvenile home -- a move that also triggered a huge row.