New Delhi, Jul 9: The Supreme Court (SC) today upheld the verdict of death for the four Nirbhaya gangrape and murder convicts.
An SC bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan rejected the pleas of three of the four convicts Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23).
The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), has not yet filed a review petition against the apex court's May 5, 2017 judgement. Advocate A P Singh, representing Akshay, said he will be filing a review petition.
The apex court in its May 2017 verdict upheld the capital punishment awarded to the four convicts 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.
"Death penalty is cold-blooded killing in the name of justice," said the three convicts' counsel AP Singh, when making his plea to the SC.
Nirbhaya was gang raped 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 her injuries on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.
In its May 2017 ruling upholding the death sentence, the Supreme Court had said that the "brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature" of the crime could create a "tsunami of shock" to destroy a civilised society.
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