New Delhi: The Delhi High Court reserved its judgement after hearing the Centre’s plea to overturn the stay order on the execution of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case on Sunday, February 2.
Presiding over the hearing, Justice Suresh Kait said that once all parties have made their concluding remarks, the court will pass an order.
Appearing for the Centre, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued that the Nirbhaya convicts were intentionally frustrating the mandate of law and getting their execution delayed through a “deliberate, calculated, and well though of design”.
Advocate AP Singh, counsel for the death row convicts, opposed the Centre’s plea. “Why only in this case there is a hurry? Justice hurried is justice buried,” he said.
Senior advocate Rebecca John, representing the fourth convict Mukesh Kumar (32), raised preliminary objection on the Centre’s plea saying it was not maintainable.
She contended that the Centre was never a party in the case proceedings before the trial court and while the government was accusing the convict of delay, it has woken up just two days ago.
“It was the victim’s parents who moved the trial court for issuance of death warrants against the convicts. At no point the central government or the state government approached the trial court to immediately issue death warrants,” John contended.
John told the high court that the Centre has moved a plea in the Supreme Court seeking clarification whether co-convicts can be executed separately and this petition is pending before the apex court.
It can be recalled that a 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons, before being thrown out on the road.
She died on December 29, 2012 in Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital.
One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail.
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.
The top court, in its 2017 verdict, had upheld the capital punishment awarded to the convicts by the Delhi High Court and the trial court.
