NEW DELHI: Amidst mounting speculations that the four men convicted in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case may be executed soon, the Supreme Court said it would hear a review petition by convict Akshay Singh Thakur on December 17.
Akshay, who had not filed the review plea earlier with the other three convicts, had moved the apex court with the petition on Wednesday saying executions only kill criminals, not the crime.
A three-judge bench will hear the plea of Akshay, whose lawyer has questioned the capital punishment at a time life is getting short due to pollution.
The Supreme Court had on July 9 last year dismissed the review pleas filed by the three other convicts Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Sharma, saying no grounds were made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.
The four convicts are on death row for two years.Six people were convicted for brutally raping and murdering the 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus while she was on her way back home on December 16, 2012. She died from her injuries but the brutal gang rape sparked a nationwide fury that led to a new legislation to deal with such heinous crimes.
Of the six people convicted in the high-profile case, one was a minor, who was sent to a rehabilitation centre, and another convict, Ram Singh, committed suicide inside the Tihar Jail in 2013.