Nirbhaya case: 'Mockery of justice'?

“Deferred till further orders.” This was how Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana put an end to a day of hectic activity regarding the hanging of the four convicts guilty of brutalising and subsequently killing the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in December 2012.

The four—Mukesh Singh, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Kumar Gupta and Vinay Sharma—were scheduled to hang at 6am on March 3. The four have been able to exploit loopholes in the law and delay their execution twice already. Two death warrants have been signed in the past, and then revoked following new petitions. The first death warrant was for January 22 and the second February 1. The third death warrant was issued on February 17, and THE WEEK had reported that the chances of the hanging taking place on March 3 were slim. The most important reason for this was that the fourth convict, Pawan Gupta, had not yet filed either a curative plea in the Supreme Court, or a clemency plea before the President.

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Although Judge Rana had given a week's time ahead of issuing the warrant for the convicts to file all their pleas, Gupta had not done so. His lawyer, A.P. Singh received censure from the judge today. “Since day 1, whenever people were trying to put you [Singh] in the dock, I was never with them. You were discharging your duty....'' However, since Singh had delayed filing the mercy plea till the eleventh hour, the judge noted that “one wrong move by anybody... you know the consequences?” He was listening to a plea that Singh had filed, seeking a stay on the execution since Gupta had sent a mercy plea to the President today.

The prosecution said that the plea itself was not admissible before that court since the preparations for the executions had already begun, the 24-hour countdown had started, and now, under Section 840 of the Prison Manual, only the state government could stay the execution. Rana reserved his order in the afternoon. In the evening, after 5pm, officials from Tihar Jail came to the court to inform him that they had received intimation that the mercy plea had been filed, and were awaiting instructions. Rana then deferred the hanging.

Earlier in the day, Gupta's curative petition, which was filed on Saturday, was heard by a five-member Supreme Court bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramanna. Gupta had appealed that he was a juvenile and, therefore, be exempt from the hanging. The plea was rejected.

The mercy petition reached the President's office by afternoon—it was filed only after 11am, which was cutting it fine. President Ram Nath Kovind had turned down the pleas of the other three convicts. Jitendra Jha, who represents the victim's parents, however, said, “We cannot prejudge what the President will say. Let us wait.” According to rules, once the President rejects a clemency plea, there has to be at least a 14-day period before the hanging, to give the convict reasonable time to come to terms with the order and set his affairs in order.

Rana's verdict came as a big relief to the parents of the convicts. Pawan's family and Mukesh's mother were in the courtroom, as were the victim's parents, Asha Devi and Badrinath. Mukesh's mother smiled for the first time—she had been weeping all day. “I was supposed to go to the jail and meet Mukesh today, but I wanted to be here. I was hopeful God would hear my plea,'' she said. Pawan's parents, however, remained expressionless. They are well aware that this is a temporary reprieve, and perhaps, the last one. His mother said, “How can I be happy?”, while his father said he would keep fighting for his son's life till his last breath.

Asha Devi and Badrinath were aware that the likelihood of the execution being deferred was high. “We have waited so long for justice, we will wait some more,” Badrinath said. “Let them exhaust every legal remedy, so that tomorrow no one can say they were treated unfairly and not given their chance. This delay, however, is very distressing to us, personally.”

Asha Devi was, however, not so accepting. She berated the legal system which was making a mockery of the case with repeated stays and deferments. “I cannot be sure that the next time a death warrant is issued, it will mean their hangings. This mockery of justice seems to be stretching non-stop,” she said.