Nirbhaya case: SC dismisses Pawan’s plea for review of order rejecting juvenility claim

Team Udayavani, Jan 31, 2020, 5:37 PM IST

New Delhi: The Supreme Court Friday dismissed the plea filed by one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, Pawan Gupta, seeking review of its order rejecting his juvenility claim.

The review plea filed earlier in the day was taken up for consideration in-chamber by a bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna, which dismissed it.

Pawan, through his counsel A P Singh, had moved the apex court seeking review of its January 20 verdict rejecting his plea in which he had claimed to be a juvenile at the time of commission of the offence.

While dismissing his appeal on January 20, the top court had said there was no ground to interfere with the Delhi High Court order that rejected Pawan’s similar plea.

The apex court had said that the convict’s claim was rightly rejected by the trial court as also the high court.

It had said the matter was raised earlier in the review plea before the apex court which rejected claim of juvenility taken by Pawan and another convict Vinay Kumar Sharma and that order has attained finality.

Pawan’s counsel had earlier argued that as per his school leaving certificate, he was a minor at the time of the offence.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Delhi Police, had said Pawan’s claim of juvenility was considered at each and every judicial forum and it will be a travesty of justice if the convict is allowed to raise the claim of juvenility repeatedly and at this point of time.

The trial court on January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the execution of all the four convicts in the case — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan (25), Vinay (26) and Akshay (31) — in Tihar jail at 6 am on February 1. Earlier, on January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.

As of now, only Mukesh has exhausted all his legal remedies including the clemency plea which was dismissed by President Ram Nath Kovind on January 17 and the appeal against the rejection was thrown out by the Supreme Court on January 29.

Convict Akshay’s curative petition was dismissed by the top court on January 30. Another death row convict Vinay moved mercy plea before President on January 29, which is pending.

A trial court is scheduled to pronounce its order during the day on an application of three death row convicts in the case seeking a stay on their execution on February 1.

The counsel for Akshay, Vinay and Pawan has approached the trial court seeking stay on the execution scheduled on February 1, saying the legal remedies of some of the convicts are yet to be availed.

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

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail in 2013.

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.