New Delhi: The Supreme Court today extended till April 14 the stay on the execution of death penalty of two of the four convicts in the December 16 gangrape and murder case, asking for copy of certain documents.
The apex court had on March 15 stayed till March 31 and then till April 7 the execution of death sentence of Mukesh and Pawan Gupta.
A bench comprising justices B S Chauhan and J Chelameswar said the interim order will continue till April 14 by which advocate M L Sharma, counsel for the two convicts, will submit the post-mortem report of the Singapore hospital where the victim was treated and succumbed to her injuries.
The court had on March 31 also sought the trial court records.
Besides Mukesh (27) and Pawan (20), the Delhi High Court had also upheld the conviction and death penalty of Akshay Thakur (29) and Vinay Sharma (21).
While dismissing their appeals, the High Court had termed the offence as "extremely fiendish" and "unparallelled in the history of criminal jurisprudence" and said the "exemplary punishment" was the need of the hour.
It had said if this case was not "the rarest of rare cases" then "there is likely to be none".
The 23-year-old paramedic, on the night of December 16, 2012, was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.
The prime accused in the case Ram Singh was found dead in Tihar Jail in March last year and the trial against him was abated.
The sixth accused, a juvenile, was on August 31, 2013, convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home by the Juvenile Justice Board.
Mukesh and Pawan in their appeal submitted that they were
denied a fair trial due to public and political pressure and that they were not allowed to take the service of lawyers of their choice.
"To satisfy political scenario and personal sympathy as the victim is a girl does not take away right of a fair trial which has been denied and the real accused has been left free for ever, which is evident from the records itself," the petition said.
They contended that the trial in the case was started on January 21, 2013 under public/political pressure, contrary to the legal provisions, with sole object to hang them and other accused persons.
"There are glaring evidences of miscarriage of justice on record for procuring false statement under torture by the prosecution," the petition has submitted.
