The fourth convict in the 2012 Delhi gangrape case on Friday filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court against the death penalty awarded to him, Bar and Bench reported. Pawan Gupta, along with the other convicts – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh – are scheduled to be hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi on March 3.
In his plea, Gupta sought his death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment, according to PTI.
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.
The death warrants were first issued for January 22, and then postponed to February 1 because of the mercy pleas filed by two of the convicts. Gupta was the only one among the four convicts who had not availed of the legal remedies. His counsel had told a sessions court in Delhi earlier this that he could not avail any legal remedy as his earlier lawyer did not meet him during the seven-day period granted by the Delhi High Court.
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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