Heena Sharma Blog

The execution of convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case will be the first time post Independence that four men are hanged to death together. Sixteen convicts have been executed in the country in the past three decades, including Yakub Memon, Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab. On February 9, 2013, Afzal Guru was executed in Tihar jail. Guru was convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack. No execution has taken place in Tihar since Guru. In 1989, former prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassin Satwant Singh and co-conspirator Kehar Singh were hanged in Tihar Jail. There has also been a dual hanging in the past, when Ranga and Billa were hanged together after they were convicted in the kidnapping and murder of siblings Geeta and Sanjay Chopra. Jasbir Singh alias Billa and Kuljeet Singh also known as Ranga Khus were hanged at Tihar Jail on 31 January 1982. Read More

The Supreme Court deferred the hearing on Centre's plea seeking separate execution of four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case to Friday and asked the convicts to file their counter replies by then. A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna appointed senior advocate Anjana Prakash as amicus curiae on Thursday to represent the convict Pawan Kumar Gupta. The bench said it is deferring the hearing till 2 pm Friday in wake of a trial court order on Wednesday, which directed the District Legal Services Authority to provide Gupta's father with a list of its empanelled advocates to choose from to represent the convict. Gupta is the only convict who has not yet filed a curative petition the last legal remedy available to a person which is decided in-chamber. He also has the option of filing a mercy plea against the death sentence. Read More

The Supreme Court will hear at 12.45 pm on Monday the plea of a death row convict in the 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case against a Delhi High Court order dismissing his claim that he was a juvenile when the crime was committed. Pawan Kumar Gupta's plea will be heard by a bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bushan and A S Bopanna. Gupta had moved the apex court on Friday. He has also sought a direction restraining the authorities from executing the death penalty, scheduled for February 1. A Delhi court on Friday issued fresh death warrants for February 1 against the four convicts -- Vinay Sharma, Mukesh Kumar, Akshay Kumar Singh and Pawan -- in the case. A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gangraped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road. Read More

The Delhi government Wednesday told the high court that execution of the death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case will not take place on January 22 as a mercy plea has been filed by one of them. The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail. A Delhi court had issued their death warrants on January 7. Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal were told by the Delhi government and the Centre that the petition filed by convict Mukesh, challenging his death warrant, was premature. The Delhi government and the prison authorities informed the court that under the rules, it will have to wait for the mercy plea to be decided before executing the death warrant. They also said that none of the four convicts can be executed on January 22 unless the present mercy plea is decided. Read More

The fourth death row convict has not filed a review petition against the apex court's judgement Current Affairs News : The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed review petitions filed by three convicts in the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder case, upholding a death sentence handed to them. A Bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan delivered the judgment on the pleas of Mukesh (29), Pawan Gupta (22) and Vinay Sharma (23) in the case that rocked the nation six years ago and paved way for stringent laws against sexual harassment in the country. The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh (31), has not filed a review petition against the apex court's May 5, 2017, judgment. The Supreme Court had said the "brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature" of the crime could create a "tsunami of shock" to destroy a civilised society. In its 2017 verdict, the apex court had upheld the capital punishment award...