NEW DELHI: Death penalty to the four remaining convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape case will soon be carried out if not challenged before the President within seven days, as the Tihar Jail authorities have informed them that they have exhausted all legal remedies and are only left with the provision of filing a mercy petition against the death sentence before the President.
In a notice issued to the four convicts on October 29, the jail superintendent informed them that they have only seven days within the receipt of the notice to file the mercy petition.
Tihar Director-General Sandeep Goel said the notice was issued to them and if they do not end up filing a mercy petition, the trial court will be informed, which will then decide on the future course of action.
Three of the convicts are housed in Tihar and one other in Mandoli. As per Goel, if the mercy petition is not filed, the prison authorities will approach the court, which will issue a death warrant.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons. She died on December 29, 2012, at
Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
One of the accused, Ram Singh, had hanged himself in jail. The juvenile, convicted of rape and murder and was given three years’ imprisonment in a reform facility, the maximum sentence for a juvenile.
On July 9 last year, the apex court dismissed the pleas of three convicts - Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma - seeking review of its 2017 verdict which upheld the capital punishment given to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case. The fourth convict, Akshay Kumar Singh, had not filed a review plea in the apex court.