Nirbhaya: SC rejects another curative plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday

dismissed

the

curative petition

of

Akshay Thakur

, one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape-and-murder case. It had earlier dismissed the curative pleas of two other convicts, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh. Only Pawan Gupta has so far not filed a similar plea.

“We have gone through the curative petitions and the relevant documents. In our opinion, no case is made out within the parameters indicated in the decision of this court in Rupa Ashok Hurra vs Ashok Hurra & Another, reported in 2002 (4) SCC 388. Hence, the curative petitions are dismissed,” a bench of Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan said.

The court dismissed Thakur’s plea seeking open court hearing on his petition and passed the order after examining the plea in chamber.

The court had on Wednesday rejected Singh’s plea challenging the President’s declining his mercy plea and said there was no illegality in the decision. With the dismissal of his plea, Singh has now exhausted all legal remedies to avoid execution of his death sentence.

The trial court on January 17 issued death warrants for the second time for the execution of all four convicts in the case — Singh (32), Gupta (25), Sharma (26) and Thakur (31) — in Tihar Jail at 6 am on February 1. Earlier, on January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.