A five-justice Supreme Court bench on Monday dismissed the curative plea filed by Pawan Gupta, one of the four men sentenced to death in 2012 gang-rape and murder of a physiotherapy student. The case has been known as the Nirbhaya case, the name given to the victim.
Gupta is scheduled to be executed with the other three prisoners on March 3.
Gupta's plea was heard in an 'in-chamber' hearing by Justices N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra, R.F. Nariman, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.
Pawan (25) claimed juvenility to seek commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment. He filed the curative plea through lawyer A.P. Singh seeking setting aside of the Supreme Court's earlier verdicts on appeals and review petitions in the Nirbhaya case.
Pawan was the last death row convict in the case to move the Supreme Court with his curative plea, the final legal remedy available to a person. Pawan has one remaining option—filing a mercy plea with the president. The president has already rejected the mercy petitions of the remaining three Nirbhaya case convicts.
