Nirbhaya case: President rejects third mercy plea; convicts to be hanged soon, says minister

President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday rejected the mercy petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the four convicts facing the gallows in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case. Kovind has already rejected the clemency petition of two other convicts—Mukesh Singh and Vinay Kumar Sharma.

Meanwhile, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad assured the Lok Sabha that the convicts in the case will be hanged soon. "We are very strict... justice will be given to her. Convicts will be hanged soon," he told the house.

Earlier in the day, the Delhi High Court ordered that all the four convicts in the Nirbhaya case have to be executed together, not separately, and dismissed the Centre's plea against the trial court's order staying the execution of their death sentence.

The high court also faulted the authorities concerned for not taking steps for issuance of death warrants after rejection of appeals of the convicts by the Supreme Court in 2017.

The trial court on January 7 had issued black warrants for the execution of all the four convicts in Tihar jail at 7 am on January 22. However, they could not be hanged due to pendency of mercy petition of one of them. Later, on January 17, the trial court fixed February 1, 6 am as the hanging date and time.

On January 31, the trial court again stayed the execution as the counsel for three convicts—Pawan, Vinay and Akshay—urged it to adjourn the matter "sine die", saying their legal remedies were yet to be exhausted.

Nirbhaya, a 23-year-old paramedic student, was raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16- 17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons, before being thrown out on the road.

She died on December 29, 2012 in Singapore's Mount Elizabeth Hospital.

With inputs from PTI