New Delhi:The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government on Thursday rejected the mercy plea of Mukesh, one of the convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya rape and murder case. The mercy plea was then forwarded to Lieutenant Governor, who has now sent it to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Delhi High Court had declined to entertain the plea of one of the four death row convicts against the death warrant and gave him liberty to challenge it in sessions court.
A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal said there is no error in trial court's January 7 order issuing death warrant against convict Mukesh Kumar Singh. The Delhi government informed the high court during the hearing that the execution of convicts will not take place on January 22 as a mercy plea has been filed by one of them.
Read: HC refuses to set aside Nirbhaya convict's death warrant; convict approach trial court
The four convicts -- Mukesh (32) Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- were to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail. A Delhi court had issued their death warrants on January 7.
The Delhi government and prison authorities told a bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal that under the prison rules, if death sentence has been awarded to more than one person in a case and if only one of them moves a mercy plea, the execution of the others too has to be postponed till the plea is decided.
The Delhi HC had also expressed displeasure over the "strategy" adopted by the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case to delay the process of execution, saying the system was being exploited.
