Govt moves SC as HC rejects separate hanging

New Delhi: The Centre and the Delhi government on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court challenging Delhi high court order holding that all four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case will be executed together and not individually. Both the Centre and the Delhi government moved the high court over the January 31 trial court order staying the execution of the death sentences till further orders.

The Centre and the Delhi government moved the Supreme Court against the high court order pronounced on Wednesday afternoon.

Holding that all four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case — Pawan Kumar Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26),  Akshay Kumar (31) and Mukesh (32) — have to be executed together, the high court directed the convicts to exhaust all their legal remedies in seven days, after which the authorities should act according to the law. Having rejected the plea by the Centre and the Delhi government against the trial court order, the high court in its ruling Wednesday faulted the authorities for not taking the necessary steps after the Supreme Court had in May 2017 upheld the death sentence of the four convicts.

In apparent contrast to the urgency shown by the Centre and the Delhi government now in carrying out the sentence, Justice Suresh Kumar Kait said in his order: “I have no hesitation in saying that after the dismissal of the SLP (special leave petition) by the Supreme Court in May 2017, nobody took steps for issuance of death warrants for their execution.”

Justice Kait added: “All the authorities were sleeping, waiting for convict Akshay to file a review petition on December 9, 2019 challenging the Supreme Court verdict upholding his death penalty. His review plea was dismissed by the apex court on December 18, 2019.”

Pointing to the brutality of the crime the four death row convicts committed in December 2012 and the delaying tactics used by them to postpone execution of the death sentence, the high court referred to the “horrible, dreadful, cruel, abominable, ghastly, gruesome and heinous offence of rape coupled with a bone-chilling murder of a young woman, which shook the conscience of the entire country”. The high court added: “It cannot be disputed that the convicts have frustrated the process by using delaying tactics.”

A 23-year old paramedical professional, Nirbhaya, as she came to be known, was brutally sexually assaulted in a moving bus by five men — one of whom killed himself in prison — on December 16, 2012. The crime had triggered nationwide outrage. Nirbhaya had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.