Nirbhaya Case : Death Row Convict Pawan Gupta Files Curative Plea In SC

Three days ahead of the scheduled hanging, Nirbhaya case convict Pawan Kumar Gupta filed curative petition in the Supreme Court on Friday, challenging the order of conviction and sentence in the 2012 Delhi gangrape-murder case.

He seeks commutation of death penalty to life sentence in the petition.

This is the last available legal remedy for him.

Death warrants are in force for the execution of four convicts in the Nirbhaya case on March 3 at 6 AM.

The curative petitions of the other three convicts - Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar- were earlier dismissed by a 5-judge bench comprising Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Narima, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

Pawan Gupta had also attempted to raise a claim that he was a juvenile at the time of the offence. But the plea of juvenility was rejected concurrently by the Trial Court, Delhi High Court and also the Apex Court.

The death penalty was upheld by the Supreme Court on May 5, 2017. Later, in July 2018, the SC dismissed the review petitions filed by Mukesh, Vinay and Pawan. In December last year, the review petition of Akshay was dismissed.