[Breaking] Nirbhaya Case: Delhi Court Refuses To Stay Execution Of Death Sentences

Update : The execution of death sentences against all convicts were stayed by ASJ of Patiala House Courts in the evening taking note of the mercy petition filed by Pawan Kumar Gupta

A Delhi Court on Monday dismissed the plea moved by convicts in the Nirbhaya case for stay of the execution of their death sentences, which is scheduled to take place tomorrow, March 3, at 6 AM.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana of Patiala House Courts dismissed the application. Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court dismissed the curative petition filed by Pawan Kumar Gupta seeking commutation of death sentence.

On February 29, Counsel for the death row convicts, Pawan Kumar Gupta and Akshay Singh, had filed an application seeking a stay on the execution of the death warrant on four specific grounds:

• - A second mercy petition which was filed on behalf of Akshay on February 29 is pending.
• - A curative petition, filed on February 28, by Pawan is pending consideration before the apex court (soon after the order was reserved, notification that the plea was rejected came out of the Supreme Court)
• - A Special Leave Petition regarding separate hanging of convicts was also pending before SC, which is to hear the same on March 5.
• - An application before the Election Commission of India is pending regarding Vinay Sharma's mercy rejection during Model Code of Conduct being in force

Today before Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana, advocate AP Singh, for the convicts submitted that Rule 836 of the Delhi Prison Rules 2018 unequivocally mandates that when any appeal or application is pending before SC, a death sentence cannot be executed. Further under Rule 858, the death warrant cannot be executed against remaining convicts. He went on to urge that since a complete mercy petition was not filed in the case of Akshay, he is compelled to file a fresh one now.

The public prosecutor then vehemently opposed the application saying the convicts are playing with rule of law and are adopting all kinds of dilatory and frivolous tactics simply to caught the process of law.

He then informed the court that Akshay's mercy was filed on Jan 31 after which secretariat of President, through MHA, directed jail authorities to send comments on AP Singh's letter dated Feb 1, regarding non furnishing of all requisite documents. The Jail Superintendent vide a Report dated February 3, had informed that all documents were forwarded and all lacunae in the mercy plea had been filled and forwarded to the President who then rejected the plea on February 5.

Additionally, he informed, the State has not yet received any information regarding the second mercy petition of Akshay.

Regarding Pawan's curative, it is submitted that the same was filed after considerable delay, and cannot be ground for staying execution.

With regard to SLP in SC, the PP refered to the apex court's order from February 14, where it was said that pendency of petitions would not be a bar on the lower court to consider the matter on merits.

With reference to application before EC, it was argued that the very contention exposes the conduct of the applicant. He submitted that there is no statutory bar whereby execution of death sentence can be stayed because condemned convicts have approached EC, or any statutory body of that nature.

The Judge took note of the argument that there's no plausible legal ground to stay execution of death sentence.

Another lawyer from Nirbhaya's legal team apprised the court that AP Singh was fined Rs. 25,000 by the bar and urged court to look into his new, predated vakalatnama for Pawan. ASJ Rana, however, was not inclined to go into the issue. The judge, nonetheless, pulled up Singh and questioned the nature of legal counsel he was affording to the convicts. "I want to ask you when you got to know about mercy rejection on Feb 5, you still waited to file a fresh petition till Feb 29?", he asked. "How can you do this? You leave your client hanging till the last hour and then file?"