SC upholds death penalty of three convicts in Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death penalty awarded to three convicts in the infamous Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case. Three of the four convicts - Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23) - who are on death row had filed a review petition against their punishment. The judgement was delivered by a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan. The apex court while delivering the verdict said that the death row convicts failed to point out "error" in the judgement. 

The bench said that these three convicts were heard elaborately during the stage of their appeal against the Delhi High Court's judgement and no case has been made out by them for review of the apex court's verdict upholding the death penalty.

The four death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), had not filed a review petition against the apex court's May 5, 2017 judgement. Advocate AP Singh, representing Akshay Kumar Singh had said, "Akshay has not filed a review petition yet. We will be filing it later."

The apex court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to the convicts by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case of gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student on December 16, 2012. In its judgement, the Supreme Court had said that the "brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature" of the crime could create a "tsunami of shock" to destroy a civilised society.

Nirbhaya was gangraped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in South Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar jail in Delhi.

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