New Delhi: The Supreme Court’s pre-dawn hearing of the plea on Friday by one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, who were all finally hanged in the wee hours, was yet another in the line of such extraordinary proceedings conducted by the country’s top court.
Post midnight Friday, the apex court opened its door to Pawan Gupta’s last plea challenging the rejection of his second mercy petition by the President.
A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna took up the matter at 2.30 am. It however rejected the plea saying no ground was made out to warrant judicial review of the President’s decision to reject his mercy plea.
Following that, Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am in Tihar Jail for the savage rape of the 23-year-old intern on December 16, 2012. She died a fortnight later of her injures.
Similarly, the apex court had on July 29, 2015 sat through the midnight to consider an urgent plea to stay the scheduled execution of lone death row convict of 1993 Mumbai blasts case, Yakub Memon, at 6 AM in Yerwada jail the next day.