Nirbhaya case: Delhi HC dismisses Pawan Gupta's plea claiming he was juvenile in 2012

New Delhi, Dec 19: The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed the plea of one of the four convicts facing the gallows in the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder case.

The court had earlier recalled the adjournment hearing of convict Pawan Gupta's plea. The convict had approached the court claiming that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence in December 2012.

The plea filed by convict Pawan Kumar Gupta is listed for hearing on Thursday before Justice Suresh Kumar Kait.

Seeking to be declared a juvenile at the time of occurrence of the incident, Pawan alleged that his ossification test was not conducted by the investigating officers and claimed benefit under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.

He said in his plea that the provision of section 7A of JJ Act lays down that a claim of juvenility may be taken before any court and it shall be recognised at any stage, even after final disposal of the case.

Pawan, who was awarded death sentence and lodged in Tihar jail, sought that the concerned authority be directed to conduct his ossification test to ascertain his claim of juvenility.

Besides Pawan, the other three convicts in the case are Mukesh, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh.

A 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of 16-17 December 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road.

She died on 29 December 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.

A juvenile involved in the crime was convicted by a juvenile justice board and released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.