Nirbhaya Case: Convict files for curative petition ahead of hanging

One of the convicts in the Nirbhaya Case on Thursday filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court. This comes in just days after a court issued death warrant against all four convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya Delhi gang-rape case. A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a convict and it is generally considered in-chamber.

Convict Vinay Sharma's lawyer AP Singh said a curative petition has been filed in the Supreme Court which seeks a stay on the death penalty.

Earlier, a Delhi court had issued the death warrants against the four death row convicts -- Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

The Supreme Court had on December 18 dismissed the plea of another convict - Akshay seeking review of its decision. It said that the review petition is not in place for "re-hearing of appeal over and over again" and that it had already considered the mitigating and aggravating circumstances while upholding the death penalty.

The Case:

A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. The gory incident ignited sparks across the country. Seven years later, the court has now given the convicts a death penalty.

On July 9 last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict.

One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail.

A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.