Nirbhaya case: Delhi High Court dismisses convicts' plea to stay execution of death warrant

Delhi High Court on Thursday night rejected an urgent plea moved by the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case convicts’ lawyer AP Singh, challenging the trial court's order which refused to stay the execution of death warrant.

Delhi High Court heard an urgent plea moved by the convicts' lawyer AP Singh and gave its order. The plea of 3 convicts is seeking a stay on execution on the ground of pendency of various legal applications in different courts. 

The High Court pulled up Advocate AP Singh representing the death-row convicts for not adhering to prerequisite technicalities before filing the petition. Singh moved the High Court challenging the trial court`s order which had declined to stay the execution scheduled for early morning on March 20.

"There is no annexure, no memo of parties, there is nothing in this matter, no affidavits, nothing. Do you have the permission to file this petition?" the judge asked Singh, who retorted, "Due to coronavirus, no photocopy machine is working."

The plea was mentioned before the registry officials who put it up before the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court who marked it to the bench comprising Justice Manmohan and Justice Sanjeev Narula.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had trashed the desperate attempts by three of the four death-row convicts to escape the gallows. Just a day before the scheduled execution, the top court one after the other dismissed three pleas filed by Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh and Akshay Singh including two petitions that were filed today itself.

The fourth convict Vinay Sharma has not filed any petition after he exhausted all his legal remedies including the mercy petition with the President.

At the start of the day's business, six judges of the top court took up the curative petition filed by Pawan against the dismissal of his juvenility claim by the apex court on January 31 in the review petition, and on January 20 in the appeal against the Delhi High Court order.

A six-judge bench headed by Justice NV Ramana dismissed the plea, saying "no case is made out".

On March 5, the trial court issued fresh warrants for hanging on March 20 at 5.30 am of all convicts in the case - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Singh (31) for brutally assaulting Nirbhaya on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012.