Nirbhaya convict's plea to be heard by SC today

New Delhi, Jan 27: The Supreme Court will hear on Tuesday the plea of death row convict Mukesh Kumar in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case challenging the dismissal of his mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind.

A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna would hear the plea at 12.30 pm tomorrow.

"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.

Earlier, the top court said that it would expeditiously take up the pleas of one of the death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case.

The Chief Justice of India, S A Bobde directed the lawyer to move the Supreme Court registry for urgent listing of the plea. If somebody is going to be hanged then there is nothing more urgent than this, Justice Bobde also said.

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.