NEW DELHI: Refusing to entertain a plea seeking directions for the immediate execution of the four convicts in the December 16, 2012 gang rape and murder case, the Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the petitioner and warned him not to file such cases in the future. “You want us to go around Delhi and execute these people? What kind of prayer you are making? You are making the court a joke,” a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said.
A 23-year-old paramedic student was raped 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 died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
One of the accused, Ram Singh, had hanged himself in the jail and another, a juvenile, was convicted of rape and murder. He was given the maximum sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility.
On July 9, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts — Mukesh (31), Pawan Gupta (24) and Vinay Sharma (25) — seeking review of its 2017 judgement upholding the capital punishment awarded to them by lower courts.
During the hearing, advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner, told the bench that the death penalty was not acting as a deterrent in rape and murder cases due to delays. “Is the death penalty acting as a deterrent? Please do not file cases like this otherwise we will ask the registry not to accept it,” the bench said to the petitioner.