Nirbhaya case: SC dismisses review plea - will the accused be hanged now?

July 9 (AZINS) The Supreme Court today dismissed pleas filed by three out of the four convicts seeking review of its verdict upholding the death penalty awarded to them in the sensational December 16, 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan rejected the review pleas filed by Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23), saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the verdict. So will they be hanged now?

Now the convicts have two legal recourses.

1) Approach the Supreme Court through a curative plea seeking commutation of their death sentences.

2) If the SC rejects their curative petition, they can, as a last resort, file a mercy plea before the President of India.

The apex court said the death row convicts failed to point out "error apparent on the face of record" in the judgement.

The bench also said that these three convicts were heard elaborately during the stage of their appeal against the Delhi High Court's judgement and no case has been made out by them for review of the apex court's verdict upholding the death penalty.

The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), did not file a review petition against the apex court's May 5, 2017 judgement.

The apex court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case of gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student on December 16, 2012 here.

The woman was gangraped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in South Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She succumbed to injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail here.

A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board. He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.