From Yakub Memon to Nirbhaya case convicts: Times when SC held post-midnight hearings

New Delhi, Mar 20: Years after the parents of Nirbhaya struggled to bring justice to their deceased daughter, four convicts of the 2012 gang-rape case were executed on Friday morning.

Prior to the execution, the Supreme Court held a post-midnight hearing for the convicts.

It can be seen that post-midnight hearings are rare when the Supreme Court opened its doors late in the night to hear urgent pleas on hangings of convicts.

At 2:30 am, the Supreme Court heard one of the convicts, Pawan Kumar Gupta's last-ditch plea and dismissed it. However, Pawan decided not to stop there and challenged the rejection before the President of India.

Hours later, with the legal remedies were clear, the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case were hanged at 5:30 am at the Tihar Jail.

However, this is not the first time the Supreme Court has opened its doors post-midnight hearings, there are other few rare occasions that involved appeals against death penalties.

The hanging of Yakub Memon:

The Supreme Court, on July 30, 2015 woke up at 3:15 am for the first time in many years just a few hours before Yakub Memon was to be hanged at the Nagpur jail.

Yakub was convicted in the 1993 serial blasts case and was ordered to be hanged. He later approached the Supreme Court by claiming that he deserves 14 days' time after his mercy petition was rejected.

Yakub Memon's hearing was one of the rare few cases in the country where he was convicted for the deaths over 200 people. However, at 4 am, the courtroom was abuzz and within a few hours, the court dismissed the convicted terrorist's last appeal.

The killings of Nithari

Moninder Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surinder Koli were slapped with death sentence for their involvement in the killings of around 16 children.

The duo were found guilty of serial murders that took place between 2005 and 2006.

In 2014, the lawyers of Surinder Koli, moved the Supreme Court merely two hours before his hanging was scheduled in Meerut.

However, the Supreme Court stopped Koli's execution by claiming that the delay in his execution holds grounds for commutation.

But that didn't last long as a CBI court, in 2019, gave a death sentence to Surinder Koli for the murdering a 14-year-old girl who was one of the victims of the serial murders in Nithari.