NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by convict Pawan Kumar Gupta as the Court did not find any fresh ground in the matter. Pawan had claimed that he was a juvenile at the time of crime and the Delhi High Court had ignored this fact.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice R Bhanumathi said plea of juveniles raised by Pawan Kumar after his conviction in the case by trial court was rightly rejected by the trial court and the Delhi High Court.
He had moved the top court challenging the high court's order dismissing his claim of being a juvenile in December 2012.
During the hearing today, Pawan’s lawyer AP Singh claims Delhi Police concealed records pertaining to date of birth of Pawan. His school certificates were deliberately concealed.
Countering Singh, Justice Ashok Bhushan points out these records were obtained in Feb 2017 after he was convicted.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for Delhi Police told the bench, “These records were considered by the Supreme Court when it dismissed the convicts' review petition in July 2018.”
“The specific question of juvenility was dealt with and dismissed by this court in 2018. Can you be now allowed to reagitate the same issue all over again. If we allow this, proceedings will be unending and we can't allow that,” judges question Singh.
Besides, the convict has sought a direction restraining the authorities from executing the death penalty, which has been scheduled for February 1.
He has challenged the high court's December 19 order by which it also deprecated the conduct of his advocate for filing forged documents and not appearing in the court. The high court had also noted that Pawan had earlier raised the juvenility claim in his review petition against the death penalty awarded to him in the case before the apex court which had dismissed his plea on July 9 last year.
In his plea before the high court, he had claimed that as per his school certificate his date of birth was October 8, 1996.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road. She died later.