Picture Courtesy : DNA India
In a big verdict towards women’s safety and taking a tough action against rapists for their gruesome inhuman act , the Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty for three of the four rapists in the ‘Nirbhaya’ gang rape and murder case.
The brutal gang rape d murder had shocked the nation and caused widespread outrage and demands for women’s safety.
It may be recalled that in ghastly attack a 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped on the night of December 16, 2012 inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted. She succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan junked the pleas against the death sentence by Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23), saying there is no ground to reconsider the verdict.
The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), had not filed a review petition against the apex court’s May 5, 2017 judgment.
The convicts now have two legal recourses. They can approach the Supreme Court through a curative plea seeking commutation of the death sentence.
If the Supreme Court rejects their curative petition, the last resort would be to file a mercy plea before the President of India. In the 2017 verdict, the Supreme Court had upheld the capital punishment awarded to the rapists by the Delhi HC and the trial court. T
