One of the four convicted in the brutal gangrape, torture and killing of a young medical student in Delhi in 2012, Akshay Kumar Singh, filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking review of it’s 2017 judgement which upheld his death penalty. A three-judge bench headed by Justice R Banumathi rejected the review plea stating that there is no requirement to review the 2017 verdict.
During the hearing Singh questioned the death penalty of the victim and alleged that there has been “inefficiency to catch the real perpetrators”. He also said that Delhi being such a polluted city would slowly kill them anyway. His lawyer argued that there was media and public pressure to announce death penalty for him.
The three judge bench remarked, “Review petition is not re-hearing of the appeal over and over again” It claimed that similar arguments were made for petitions of the three other convicts during their respective plea hearings. However, petitions of other three convicts Mukesh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma were dismissed earlier.
After confirmation of the death sentence of convict Akshay Kumar Singh by the apex court, advocate AP Singh appearing for the convict asked for three weeks time to file mercy petition in front of the President. However, the bench gave the advocate only a week’s time to appeal for mercy in front of the President as permissible by law.
The hearing on the review plea was delayed by a day on Tuesday after Chief Justice of India SA Bobde recused himself from the hearing because his nephew had represented Nirbhaya in a court earlier.This decision implies that the convicts are almost certain to receive the death penalty.Nirbhaya’s mother called this decision “a step closer to justice”.
