Mukesh Singh, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 gangrape case, filed another petition before a court in Delhi, claiming that he was not in Delhi when the crime took place, PTI reported. The court rejected the plea.
The petition was filed by Singh’s lawyer ML Sharma before Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana on Tuesday. It sought quashing of the death penalty and claimed the convict was arrested from Rajasthan and brought to Delhi on December 17, 2012. The four convicts, along with two others, raped and brutally assaulted a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in Delhi in on December 16, 2012.
The plea also alleged that Singh was tortured inside Tihar Jail.
On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected Singh’s petition seeking the restoration of all his legal remedies on the grounds that his former lawyer had misled him. Singh had sought the cancellation of all orders passed by courts and the rejection of his mercy petition by President Ram Nath Kovind, alleging that his lawyer Vrinda Grover had acted against his interests.
The convicts – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma and Pawan Gupta – have exhausted all their legal options and are scheduled to be hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi on March 20 at 5.30 am. Mukesh Singh is the fourth convict.
Thakur, Sharma and Gupta had also approached the International Court of Justice at The Hague in the Netherlands seeking a stop to their “unlawful execution”. However, the appeal is unlikely to help the convicts as the court has no jurisdiction to deal with applications from individuals.
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