Three convicts in the gangrape and battery case of Nirbhaya have approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking stay on the execution of their death sentence.
The three convicts who approached the ICJ are Pawan Kumar Gupta and Akshay Kumar Singh and Vinay Kumar Sharma, reported news agency ANI.
Further details in case are awaited.
Earlier, the Supreme Court today rejected the plea of convict Mukesh Singh, seeking restoration of all his legal remedies alleging that his earlier lawyers misled him.
The apex court bench consisting of Justices Arun Mishra and M R Shah held Singh’s plea as not maintainable saying that the review petition and the curative petition have both been dismissed in the case.
The convict had sought quashing of all orders passed by courts and the rejection of his mercy petition by the President since the day his curative petition was dismissed by the apex court on the ground that the earlier lawyer Vrinda Grover had misled him.
The plea, filed through advocate M L Sharma, sought a CBI probe into alleged “criminal conspiracy” and “fraud” hatched by the Centre, the Delhi government and advocate Vrinda Grover, who is the amicus curiae in the case.
The 23-year-old woman, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and assaulted on December 16, 2012, in a moving bus which led to her death. All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case.
It bears recall that all the four convicts in the case were scheduled to be hanged on March 3 at Delhi’s Tihar Jail. However, the court decided to hear the lawyer of Pawan Kumar Gupta after it was informed that he has filed a mercy plea before the President of India after his curative petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court earlier in the day.which This was pronounced by a Delhi court on Monday evening.
A trial court issued fresh death warrants on March 5 against the four convicts Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Kumar Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) ordering their execution on March 20, 5.30 am.