HC dismisses convict’s plea in Nirbhaya gangrape case

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Thursday dismissed the plea of one of the four convicts facing the gallows in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case claiming that he was a juvenile at the time of offence.

Justice Suresh Kumar Kait also imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on the convict’s advocate, A.P. Singh, who did not appear in the court despite several communications sent to him on behalf of the court for playing “hide and seek.”

The court asked the Bar Council of Delhi to take action against the advocate for filing forged affidavit in the court regarding the convict’s age. Besides Pawan Kumar Gupta, who moved the plea claiming juvenility, the other three convicts in the case are Mukesh, Vinay Sharma, and Akshay Kumar Singh.

A 23-year-old paramedic student, Nirbhaya, was gang raped 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. She died on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.

One of the six accused committed suicide in Tihar jail and another was a juvenile. The trial court had awarded death sentence to other four accused, which was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

The matter is now before the Patiala House court, which has to issue death warrant against the accused.

On Wednesday, the court had asked the accused to intimate within a week whether they want to move mercy petition before the President of India.