The Supreme Court on Friday reserved its verdict on a plea against their death penalty by two of the five people convicted of gangraping and murdering a paramedical student in Delhi in 2012. The bench asked senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, representing the Delhi Police, and lawyers for the two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta, to file their written submissions by May 8, PTI reported.
The convicts argued through their lawyer AK Singh that they should be spared the death sentence as it amounted to “cold-blooded killing in the name of justice”, NDTV reported. The convicts also argued that they were “young and from poor families” and “not habitual offenders and have no criminal records, so the court must allow them to be reformed”.
Singh claimed that the death penalty “kills the criminal, not the crime”, and said it had been abolished in many countries. He also claimed his clients were underage when they were arrested.
“Death penalty exists in the statute,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra responded according to NDTV.
In May 2017, the top court had upheld a Delhi High Court judgement sentencing four of the convicts to death. The court had earlier reserved its judgement on a plea against the death sentence awarded to another convict, Mukesh
The police had charged five men and one juvenile in the case. One of the accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail. Of the rest, the four adults were sentenced to death in 2013 while the juvenile was released after three years in a remand home.
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