Delhi recommends rejection of Nirbhaya convict’s mercy plea

New Delhi, January 15

The four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case will not be hanged on January 22 as scheduled with the Delhi Government on Wednesday telling the High Court that the execution has to be postponed in view of the pendency of a mercy petition by one of them.

As authorities and the victim’s mother contended that the four men were “frustrating” and “intentionally” delaying the legal process by filing curative and mercy pleas in stages to postpone their execution, the Delhi Government recommended rejecting Mukesh Kumar Singh’s mercy plea to the President and forwarded it to the Lieutenant Governor. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters that the action was taken at “lightning speed”.

The High Court pulled up the authorities, saying there had been no application of mind and that the system was suffering from cancer in response to the submission that as per prison rules they had to wait for the other co-convicts to exhaust their mercy pleas as well. The court made the remarks while declining to hear the plea by Mukesh challenging the death warrant.

The High Court said there was no error in the trial court’s order, adding challenging the order before it amounted to playing one court against another.

The Delhi Government and Tihar Jail authorities told a Bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that under the prison rules, if death sentence was awarded to more than one person in a case and if one of them moves a mercy plea, the execution of the others too has to be postponed till the plea is decided.

“Then your rule is bad if you cannot take action till all co-convicts have moved a mercy plea,” the Bench told government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra in response to his submission.

Besides Mukesh, 32, Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) were to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail. A city court had issued their death warrants on January 7. — PTI