December 2012 gangrape case 4 convicts to be executed on Jan 22

New Delhi, Jan 7
A Delhi Court on Tuesday issued a death warrant for the four convicts in the December 2012 gangrape case. The verdict came after the parents of the victim moved the Court seeking to expedite the procedure to hang all the four convicted in the case and also demanded issuance of death warrant against them.
During the hearing, the prosecution said there was no application pending before any Court or the President by any of the convicts and the review petition of all the convicts was dismissed by the Supreme Court.
“In between issuance and execution of death warrants if the convicts want to file curative petitions they can do so,” the prosecution said. The counsel for two of the convicts — Mukesh and Vinay — said they were in process of filing a curative petition in the Supreme Court.
On December 18 last year, the Delhi Court had adjourned the hearing on the death warrants against the four convicts in the case to January 7, observing that “only when their mercy petitions are rejected that death warrants may be issued”.
The gangrape had taken place on a moving bus on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in South Delhi. The woman and her friend, who was accompanying her, were brutally assaulted and thrown out of the bus. After spending several days at a hospital in the city, the woman was shifted to Singapore, where she succumbed to injuries on December 29, 2012.
In September 2013, a fast-track Court held the four convicts guilty of 13 offences including gangrape, unnatural sexual assault, and murder of the woman, and attempt to murder her male friend.
On July 9, 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed the pleas of three of the convicts seeking review of its 2017 judgment, upholding the capital punishment given to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial Court. The fourth convict, Akshay, did not file a review plea in the Supreme Court. Prior to the pronouncement of the top Court’s verdict, one of the five convicts committed suicide in Tihar on March 11.

The Indian Express