Nirbhaya’s rapists will hang as Supreme Court rejects review

New Delhi, July 9: The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence awarded to the four convicts in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case. The court rejected the review pleas filed by the three convicts. The fourth convict had not preferred a review. The court said that the order was a considered one and there was no ground to re-consider the verdict.

All pleas of convicts were taken into account during hearing of appeals against HC order and no new ground has been raised in review petitions to warrant reconsideration of death penalties awarded to them in May2017, the Bench observed.

The Bench comprising Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan was hearing the review plea filed by Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23). The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31) did not filed a review petition against the order of the Supreme Court dated May 5 2017. Another accused Ram Singh had allegedly committed suicide at the Tihar jail. A minor in the case was convicted by the Juvenile Justice Court and served a three year sentence.

The court had upheld the death penalty awarded to the rapists by the Delhi High Court.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.