A three-justice bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed the review plea filed by Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the four convicts sentenced to death in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case. Akshay Kumar Singh had filed the plea seeking review of the Supreme Court order of 2017 confirming the death penalty for him.
Justice R. Banumathi, who headed the bench, said the court would not allow the petitioner to cast doubts on the evidence against him as it was already heard. The court said the circumstances of the case against Akshay Kumar Singh were the same as those against the other three convicts.
The rejection of the review plea means that Akshay Kumar Singh and the other convicts only have the recourse of filing curative pleas and then mercy petitions to avoid the death penalty. Vinay Sharma, one of the four convicts, had, earlier this month, sought the withdrawal of his mercy petition to the president, claiming it had been sent without his consent. Akshay Kumar Singh's lawyer said he could file a curative plea if the review petition was rejected.
A.P. Singh, counsel for Nirbhaya gang-rape convict Akshay Kumar Singh had, on Wednesday, submitted in a review plea against the death sentence that he had new facts in the case, and that conviction was made under pressure from multiple quarters.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
-Inputs from PTI
