[Breaking]: SC Dismisses Nirbhaya Death Row Convict’s Plea Claiming Juvenility At The Time Of Commission Of The Crime In 2012

The Supreme Court of India today (January 20, 2020) dismissed the plea filed by Nirbhaya convict Pawan Kumar claiming he was a juvenile at the time of the commission of offence in 2012. Pawan has realized that he was a juvenile after a death warrant has been issued against him, 7 years after the crime.

A full bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice R Banumathi and comprising Justices AS Bopanna and Ashok Bhushan was hearing the matter. 

The Solicitor General Tushar Mehta started arguing for the Delhi Police, submitting a list of dates in the morning. Mehta pointed out Pawan's birth certificate which was placed on record before the Sessions Court in January, 2013 when his claim of juvenility was trashed. Even Pawan's parents had said that he was an adult, Mehta added. Mehta further cited the relevant part of the Supreme Court judgment in review when Pawan's school records were produced by his layers as mitigating circumstances. SC categorically rejected his claim of juvenility.

It is written in the petition that Pawan Kumar Gupta was under 18 years of age at the time of the incident.

After the dismissal of his petition in the Delhi High Court, Pawan's lawyer AP Singh had filed a petition in the Supreme Court.

The four convicts Akshay, Mukesh, Pawan and Vinay had gang-raped and murdered a 23 year old woman in a moving bus in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi. The paramedic student was raped on the intervening night of December 16, 2012, inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, where she was airlifted from Delhi for treatment.

A 5-Judge bench of the Supreme Court on January 14, 2020 had dismissed the curative petitions filed by two Nirbhaya gang rape case condemned prisoners - Vinay Kumar and Mukesh - who questioned the death sentence awarded to them. 

The bench was unanimous in holding that there was no merit in the curative petitions of Vinay Sharma and Mukesh seeking reconsideration of death sentence awarded to them in the gang rape case. Other convicts in the case, Pawan Gupta (aged 25) and Akshay Kumar Singh (aged 31) hadn’t filed curative petitions.