New Delhi :The Delhi High Court today dismissed a plea by two of the four death row convicts in the December 16, 2012, gangrape-cum-murder case of a 23-year-old girl to provide true copies of articles used for DNA testing during the investigation of the case, terming it ridiculous.
Justice Indermeet Kaur also pulled up the convicts’ lawyer over the prayer made in the petition that the CBI be directed to provide true photos of the articles used for DNA test and true copies of the slides of the test.
“How can CBI be directed? I am not aware of any laboratory belonging to any of the investigating agency. As per you, the reports in the case were prepared by local police station,” the bench observed, and added “why don’t you go to police station concerned”.
Terming the convicts’ plea as ridiculous, the court asked the counsel to withdraw the petition saying else it will dismiss it.
Since the lawyer refused to withdraw the matter, the court finally dismissed it.
Convicts Mukesh and Pawan Gupta had approached the high court through their counsel M L Sharma saying the DNA test was conducted in CBI’s scientific laboratory and true photo of the articles used for the test was not given to the accused and also not filed in the trial court as well as in the high court during appeal.
It had asked the court to direct CBI to provide true copies of articles used for DNA reports to them to advance their arguments in the Supreme Court in their appeals against their conviction and death sentence.
“True photo of the articles used for DNA test couple with the true copy of the slide of the DNA test of each DNA report is required to the petitioner to ascertain and justify their defense to get justice,” the plea said.
The trial court had awarded death sentence to them and the high court had upheld it on March 13, 2014.
The court had awarded death sentence to Gupta, Mukesh, Akshay Thakur and Vinay Sharma for the brutal gangrape and murder of the girl.
Of the other accused, the juvenile was on August 31, 2013 convicted and sentenced to a maximum of three years in a reformation home by the Juvenile Justice Board, while prime accused Ram Singh was found dead in his cell in Tihar Jail on March 11, 2013 and the proceedings against him were abated.
PTI