Nirbhaya Case: Supreme Court rejects convict's plea claiming juvenility

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the plea filed by one of the death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case challenging the Delhi High Court order.

The convict Pawar Kumar Gupta's plea was dismissed by a bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bushan and A S Bopanna. He had moved the apex court on Friday, seeking a direction restraining the authorities from executing the death penalty, scheduled for February 1.

The apex court said its judgement that Gupta was not a juvenile when the crime was committed and old arguments on juvenile convicts cannot be repeated again, concluding that the Gupta will face the gallows with three other convicts, Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar and Akshay Kumar Singh on February 1, as scheduled.

Speaking to ANI, Asha Devi, mother of the gang-rape victim, said, "It is just a tactic to delay the execution. His petition was canceled in 2013 by the Supreme Court. The review petition was also dismissed by the court. He's doing it just to waste time. All the convicts must be executed on February 1."

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

(With inputs from agencies)

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