Sj Desk
NEW DELHI: A bench of justices consisting of N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan rejected the curative petition filed by rapist Pawan Gupta that pleaded his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. The 25-year-old is one of the six men who brutally gang-raped a young woman on a moving bus on 16 December 2012.
Gupta, in his plea, had once again pleaded that his age on the day he committed the dreadful crime was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him and “the age has not been determined in accordance with the procedures laid down under the Juvenile Justice Act.
Pawan Gupta is scheduled to hang to death on 3 March along with three other convicts-- Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta and Akshay Thakur. The execution has already been deferred on two previous occasions due to the pendency of legal proceedings in the case.
Gupta is the only one out of the four rapists to have not exhausted all his legal remedies, despite a seven-day deadline granted by the Delhi High Court for the purpose. The mercy petitions of three convicts -- Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay -- have already been dismissed by the President.
The Centre has accused the convicts of adopting delaying tactics and is seeking Supreme Court’s approval for sperate hangings of all the four rapists.
