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Nirbhaya case: SC rejects convict’s claim that he was juvenile in 2012


Manglore Today News Network / Yahoo

New Delhi, Jan 20, 2020:   The four convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24), Vinay Sharma (25) and Akshay Kumar Singh (33) — are scheduled to be hanged on February 1.

 

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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the petition of Pawan Gupta, one of the death row convicts in the 2012 Delhi gangrape case, who claimed that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence. A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bushan, and A S Bopanna heard convict Pawan Kumar Gupta’s plea.

Gupta moved the top court on Friday challenging the high court’s order dismissing his claim of being a juvenile in December 2012.

Advocate AP Singh, appearing for Gupta, told the bench that the convict was minor at the time of the commission of the offence in December 2012 and the high court had wrongly dismissed the plea. The counsel also produced Gupta’s school records which purportedly showed that he was a minor in 2012.

The bench said the claim of being a juvenile was not taken initially during the trial in the case. However, Gupta’s lawyer contended that it was taken as a ’mitigating circumstance’ at the time of sentencing in the case.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed the plea and said the claim about the convict being a juvenile status was examined by every forum and rejected.

The four convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24), Vinay Sharma (25) and Akshay Kumar Singh (33) — are scheduled to be hanged on February 1. They were convicted and sentenced to death in September 2013. This was upheld by the High Court in March 2014 and by the Supreme Court in May 2017.

The execution was earlier slated to take place on January 22, but was delayed after one of the convicts filed a mercy plea before President Ram Nath Kovind. The petition was rejected.