Nirbhaya case: Supreme Court to hear convict's plea against HC order rejecting his juvenility claim

The Supreme Court is to take up on Monday a plea by one of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, Pawan K Gupta that he was a juvenile at the time of the incident in 2012.

A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna would consider the special leave petition filed by Gupta against the Delhi HC's order of December 19, rejecting his plea.

The HC, after dismissing his plea, had also imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on the convict's advocate A P Singh for playing "hide and seek" as he had failed to appear in the court despite several communications. It had asked Bar Council of Delhi to take action against the advocate for filing “forged affidavit” in the court regarding the convict's age.

On Saturday, the Bar Council of Delhi, the regulatory body, issued notice to the counsel for February 28 and sought his reply within two weeks.

In his plea, Gupta claimed that he was a minor at the time of the incident and he should have proceeded under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act.

A Delhi court has already rescheduled the date of execution of Mukesh (32) Vinay Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) from January 22 to February 1 at 6 am. The President had on Friday rejected the mercy petition of one of the convicts, Mukesh.

Of the four convicts, only Mukesh has so far filed the mercy petition. Two convicts Akshay and Pawan have yet not exercised their option of filing the curative petition in the Supreme Court,

A 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before she was thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.