New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind rejected a mercy plea filed by Mukesh Singh, one of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, mere hours after it was forwarded to him by the Union Home Ministry on Friday.
The petition, which represented Mukesh Singh’s final appeal before his execution, was filed on Tuesday after the Supreme Court dismissed curative petitions, the last legal appeal, filed by him and Vinay Sharma, another convict.
Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Singh, Akshay Kumar Singh and Pawan Gupta were to be hanged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail at 7 am on January 22, the trial court judge had declared last week, signing a death warrant seven years after a young medical student was gang-raped on a moving bus, tortured and killed.
However, on Thursday, five days before the scheduled execution, Tihar officials asked for a new date, saying the executions could not take place till after all mercy pleas were settled.
The three other convicts are yet to file their respective mercy petitions, following the rejection of which a convict is given a 14-day period of reprieve before the execution.
Nirbhaya’s mother, fearing more delay in the execution of the four men, said she had been going to many courts for years but wanted justice now. “If they have rights, we too have the right to justice for our daughter who was killed seven years ago,” she said.
