President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday rejected the mercy plea of Vinay Sharma, one of the four death-row convicts in the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder case, reported ANI. Sharma had filed the petition before the president on January 29.
Sharma’s curative petition before the Supreme Court had been rejected on January 14, along with that of co-convict Mukesh Singh’s. Kovind has already rejected Mukesh Singh’s mercy plea since then. In Sharma’s curative plea, his lawyer had highlighted that the convict was 19 years old when he committed the crime, adding that young age and socio-economic background should have been considered by the court.
Multiple petitions have been filed by the four death-row convicts in their attempts to stall their execution. Akshay Singh, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Vinay Sharma, and Pawan Gupta were supposed to be hanged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail on February 1 at 6 am. However, a court in Delhi stayed the execution of the four convicts on Friday. The four convicts were given the death penalty – first by a trial court in September 2013, which was upheld by the Delhi High Court six months later and the Supreme Court in May 2017.
Six men raped and brutally assaulted a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012. The woman succumbed to her injuries two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore. The gangrape triggered huge protests in the Capital and across the country. One convict died in prison, while a minor convict was sent to a detention home for juveniles and was released in December 2015.
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