BackSupreme Court upholds death penalty for 2012 Delhi gang rape case convicts
The judgement was pronounced on a review petition filed by 3 out of the 4 convicts against a May 2017 order of the Supreme Court that upheld the death penalty
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed the death penalty imposed on the convicts in the gang rape and murder of a para-medical student on 16 December 2012, in New Delhi.
Holding that review jurisdiction is exercised by the court in case of “glaring omission or a miscarriage of justice", justice Ashok Bhushan ruled that this case did not have any grounds for interfere.
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A review petition cannot be used to re-argue the matter, Bhushan said.
The review petition was filed by three out of the four convicts against a May 2017 order of the apex court, which had upheld the death row of the convicts.
The May 2017 verdict by the apex court was delivered in appeal against the affirmation granted to the death sentence by the Delhi high court.
The apex court had dismissed the appeal against the death sentence in very strong words. Justice R. Banumathi had stated that “there (was) not even a hint of hesitation..with respect to the aggravating circumstances outweighing the mitigating circumstances" and there was “no justification to convert the death sentence imposed by the courts below to life imprisonment for the rest of the life."
A special fast-track court in Delhi, in September 2013, had imposed capital punishment on the four convicts—Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh—saying the case fit the “rarest of rare" category.
The sentence was upheld by the Delhi high court in appeal in 2014.
On 16 December 2012, a 23-year-old woman was brutally assaulted and raped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi, an incident which prompted nationwide protests. She died from her injuries on 29 December.
One of the other accused, who was a juvenile at the time of the incident, has been sent to a reform centre for three years while another, Ram Singh, was found dead in his cell in the Tihar jail in March 2013.
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