The lawyer cited Rule 836 of the
prison manual which says that in a case where more than one person has been
handed over the death penalty, the execution cannot take place unless all the
convicts have exhausted their legal options.
Just 12 hours before the four men who raped a 23-year-old in 2012 were
to be led to the gallows at Tihar, a Delhi court on Friday stayed the black
warrant for their execution. This was the second time that their execution was
put off by the judge. This time, the judge did not issue a fresh warrant for
their execution.
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Four men convicted in the December 16 Delhi gang-rape case will not be hanged tomorrow, a Delhi court ordered on Friday |
Several hours earlier, Judge Dharmender Rana had heard
the lawyer of the convicts seek cancellation of the death warrants since the
four were yet to exhaust their legal options. One mercy petition is still
pending before the President.
A
little after 5 pm, the judge emerged from his chambers to deliver his one-line
verdict. “Execution Order Stayed Till Further Orders,” he said.
In the written order that was made available later,
the judge ruled that seeking redressal of one’s grievances through procedures
established by law is the hallmark of any civilized society. “The courts of
this country cannot afford to adversely discriminate any convict, including
death row convict, in pursuit of his legal remedies, by turning a Nelson’s eye
towards him” the judge underscored.
The
convict’s lawyer had cited the prison manual which says that in a case where
more than one person has been handed over the death penalty, the execution
cannot take place unless all the convicts have exhausted their legal options.
“Pawan Kumar Gupta has filed a review petition in the
Supreme Court on the rejection of his juvenility claim,” Singh said. “Akshay’s
curative has been rejected and I would file the mercy plea after I have got the
order from the Supreme Court,” he further said. Singh is also representing
Gupta.
Pawan
Gupta’s review petition was however, rejected by the Supreme Court later on
Friday.
Lawyer
Vrinda Grover, who is representing Mukesh Singh, had also joined AP Singh and
said that there is a common sentence in which the accused have been convicted.
“The execution order is a common order. My client cannot be hanged and the
execution of one cannot be separated from other. Hence, the execution should be
stayed,” she had said. Mukesh is out of legal options after his plea against
the presidential order was rejected by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The arguments were made in response to prosecution’s
argument against staying the February 1 execution who said that the application
is not maintainable.
Public
prosecutor Irfan Ahmad said, “The execution date of February 1 still holds good
for all convicts barring Vinay Sharma since his mercy petition is pending
before the President. So, all the other convicts except Vinay can be hanged and
no law prevents their hanging.”
The
trial court had on January 17 issued black warrants for the second time for the
execution of all the four convicts in the case in Tihar jail at 6 am on
February 1.
The
four convicts - Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma
(26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) - were sentenced to death by a fast-track
court in just about a year after the gruesome crime that had brought thousands
of people on the streets to protest. It led to a major overhaul of laws surrounding
sexual assault.
Their victim, a
23-year-old physiotherapy intern, was gang-raped and savagely assaulted on the
night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in South Delhi. She died of her
injuries a fortnight later in a Singapore hospital.
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Credit: HT
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