Nirbhaya case: Supreme Court to hear convict Akshay Thakur`s curative petition today

New Delhi: In the Nirbhaya rape and murder case, the Supreme Court on Thursday (January 30) will hear the curative petition of Akshay Thakur, one of the four convicts. Akshay is seeking commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Supreme Court's five-judge bench, headed by Justice NV Ramana, will hear the petition at 1 pm, filed by advocate AP Singh on behalf of Akshay. The plea states that the top court should set aside the May 5, 2017 order, which upheld the death sentence of the convicts.

Akshay's plea said that lack of criminal antecedents, erroneous reliance on deterrence, and the probability of reformation, socio-economic circumstances, non-consideration of constitution bench judgment, were not considered by the courts while awarding his client to death.

In December 2019, the apex court had dismissed Akshay`s review petition. 

On Wednesday, a three-judge bench of the top court also dismissed the plea of another Nirbhaya Mukesh Kumar Singh challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by the President. With this decision by the top court, Mukesh has exhausted the last legal remedy available to him against the death sentence.

A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna said that all the relevant documents connected with the case were placed before the President and then a decision was taken on his mercy petition.

Notably, for the last 15 days, some of the accused are visiting courts to use their legal rights, but they have not got any favourable response from any court so far.

Earlier this month, a Delhi court had issued the death warrant for Akshay, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Kumar Sharma, and ordered their hanging on February 1.

The case pertains to the gang-rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in Delhi. The woman died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.