Nirbhaya: SC rejects plea of convict Mukesh Singh seeking restoration of legal remedies

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a plea of Mukesh Singh, one of the four death-row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, for restoration of legal remedies alleging that his earlier counsel misled and forced him to sign the papers.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M R Shah rejected the plea as “not maintainable” after hearing advocate M L Sharma, appearing for Mukesh. The court noted both the review and the curative pleas by him have already been dismissed. The petitioner then preferred to withdraw the petition.

The apex court had on July 9, 2018 dismissed the review plea of Mukesh against its judgement. Subsequently his curative and mercy pleas were rejected by the top court and President Ram Nath Kovind respectively.

On March 5, a trial court issued fresh warrants with March 20, 5.30 am, as the date for the execution of the convicts — Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31).

Mukesh in his fresh plea had sought the CBI probe into alleged "criminal conspiracy" and "fraud" hatched by the Centre, the Delhi government and advocate Vrinda Grover, who is the amicus curiae in the case.

In a related development, advocate A P Singh, representing the death row convicts Vinay, Pawan and Akshay said they have sent a letter to the International Court of Justice, as they have been falsely implicated in the case under public, political and media pressure and their execution would result into “miscarriage of justice”. Singh said different organisations, opposed to the death penalty, have put a petition in the Hague.