A.P. Singh, counsel for Nirbhaya gang-rape convict Akshay Kumar Singh, on Wednesday, submitted that he had new facts in the case, and that conviction was made under pressure from multiple quarters, ANI reported. The Supreme Court, which was hearing the review plea filed by Akshay against his death sentence, said it will pronounce orders at 1pm.
2012 Delhi gang rape case: Dr AP Singh, lawyer representing convict Akshay Kr Singh, submits to SC that he now has new facts in the case. He says that the conviction was made against his client under media pressure, public pressure & political pressure etc and it is still there. https://t.co/WjhNoKiZWA
— ANI (@ANI) December 18, 2019
A 23-year-old paramedic student was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road.
She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
According to reports, advocate Singh sought to draw a parallel between the Nirbhaya case and the issue of the death of a student at Ryan International School in Gurugram, where a bus conductor was initially framed before being exonerated of the crime.
According to Live Law, Singh raised issues of discrepancies in Nirbhaya's dying declaration, saying she was continuously on morphine dosage, and Akshay's name was not present in the first declaration.
A P Singh submits that Nirbhaya's dying declaration had discrepancies and should not have been relied upon.#Nirbhaya
— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) December 18, 2019
Opposing the review plea, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Delhi government, told the bench also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and A.S. Bopanna, that there are certain crimes where "humanity cries" and this is one of them.
"There are certain crimes where god would feel ashamed in not saving the child [victim] and in creating such a monster. The death penalty does not deserve to be set aside for such crimes," Mehta said.
He also said that convicts in the Nirbhaya case are making concerted efforts to "delay the inevitable" and the law must take its own course as soon as possible.
Chief Justice S.A. Bobde had recused himself on Tuesday from hearing the plea of convict Akshay Kumar Singh seeking review of the 2017 apex court judgment upholding his death penalty in the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case, and a new bench heard the petition. After the CJI's recusal, a bench comprising Justices R. Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A.S. Bopanna was constituted. CJI Bobde announced he was recusing from the case as his nephew, Arjun Bobde, had appeared for the victim's family in earlier proceedings.
On July 9 last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts—Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24)—in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.
"The state must not simply execute people to prove that it is attacking terror or violence against women. It must persistently work towards systematic reforms to bring about change. Executions only kill the criminal, not the crime...," said Akshay in the review plea.
Akshay has further said that death penalty entails "cold blooded killing" and does not provide convicts the chance to reform themselves.
-Inputs from PTI
