As Nirbhaya’s parents moved the Patiala House Court on Friday seeking to expedite the execution of their daughter’s killers seven years since the brutal crime, the Delhi court said it will wait for the Supreme Court’s order that will be hearing the matter as well on December 17.
Judge Satish Kumar Arora said the matter can be passed after the apex court hearing ends.
The Delhi court will hear a plea seeking the issuance of death warrants against the four people convicted in the case on December 18.
Urging the court to issue death warrants, the prosecution had said: “The court can issue death warrant. Nothing prevents the court from issuing death warrants.”
Following the Delhi court order, Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi said, “When we have fought for 7 years, we can wait for another week. On 18 December, their death warrant will be issued.
The victim’s father said that the convicts are now just few steps closer to death.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court will hear on December 17 the review petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the convicts in 2012 gangrape and murder case.
Akshay Kumar Singh on Tuesday filed a review petition in the Supreme Court seeking modification and leniency.
Singh was sentenced to death by a trial court on September 13, 2013, for raping and murdering the 23-year-old woman physiotherapist on the night of December 16, 2012, in the national capital.
The convict — Akshay — in his review petition pleaded and requested the Supreme Court to consider his prayer and review its earlier judgement of May 5, 2017, in which the top cop sentenced him to the gallows.
His sentence was upheld by the Delhi High Court and finally by the Supreme Court.
On Friday, the victim’s mother moved the apex court opposing the plea filed by the convict seeking review of its 2017 judgement awarding him death penalty.
The apex court had on July 9 last year 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.
One of the accused in the case, Ram Singh, had allegedly committed suicide at Tihar Jail in Delhi.
A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board. He was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as 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 injuries on December 29 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.