Nirbhaya convict Mukesh Singh moves SC challenging rejection of mercy plea by President

New Delhi, Jan 25: Nirbhaya convict Mukesh Singh has moved the Supreme Court challenging rejection of mercy plea by President Ram Nath Kovind.

"A petition has been filed under Article 32 for judicial review of the manner of rejection of the mercy petition in terms of the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Shatrughan Chauhan case," advocate Vrinda Grover, who is representing Kumar, told PTI.

Mukesh Singh has argued non-application of mind, one of the five grounds on which judicial review of the order of the President or the Governor under Article 72 or Article 161, as the case may be, is available to death row inmates.

The other grounds are if the order is mala fide, the order has been passed on extraneous or wholly irrelevant considerations, that relevant materials have been kept out of consideration or if the order suffers from arbitrariness.

The development comes just hours after the public prosecutor, appearing for the Tihar jail authorities, claimed that the convicts are only adopting "delaying tactics".

The advocate appearing for two of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case moved the Patiala House Court on Friday alleging that the Tihar jail authorities are delaying in handing over certain documents.

Advocate A P Singh moved an application alleging that the jail authorities are yet to release the documents which are required to file curative petitions for Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Singh (25).

The Supreme Court had recently dismissed the curative petitions of other two convicts Vinay and Mukesh Singh.

On December 17, President Kovind had rejected convict Mukesh Singh's mercy plea. His curative petition has already been dismissed by the Supreme Court.