2012 Delhi gang-rape: CJI SA Bobde recuses himself from hearing on convict's plea seeking review of death penalty

New Delhi: Chief Justice SA Bobde recused himself on Tuesday from hearing the plea of convict Akshay Kumar Singh seeking review of the 2017 apex court judgment upholding his death penalty in the 2012 Delhi gang rape-and-murder case. [caption id=“attachment_6505671” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Chief Justice of India SA Bobde. News18[/caption] At the outset, a special bench comprising CJI and Justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan made it clear that review pleas has to be heard by another appropriate bench. The CJI said one of his relatives had earlier appeared on behalf of the victim’s mother in the case and observed that it would be appropriate that some other bench hear the review plea at 10.30 am tomorrow. Advocate AP Singh, appearing for Akshay, started his submission saying that the case in hand has suffered political and media pressure and grave injustice has been done to the convict. Akshay had sought clemency arguing life in Delhi is anyway becoming short due to rising air and water pollution. On 9 July  last year, the apex court had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other three convicts — Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24) — in the case, saying no grounds have been made out by them for review of the 2017 verdict. The 23-year-old paramedic student was gang raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of 16-17 December, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on 29 December, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. One of the six accused in the case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail in Delhi. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term. The top court in its 2017 verdict had upheld the capital punishment awarded to them by the Delhi High Court and the trial court in the case. “The state must not simply execute people to prove that it is attacking terror or violence against women. It must persistently work towards systematic reforms to bring about change. Executions only kill the criminal, not the crime…,” said Akshay in the review plea, filed through advocate Singh. Akshay, lodged in a jail in Delhi, has further said that death penalty entails “cold blooded killing” and does not provide convicts the chance to reform themselves.The plea referred to the moral reasons for abolition of the death penalty and said there was no evidence to show that such a punishment has got a deterrent value. The convicts, except Akshay Kumar Singh, can still file curative pleas in the top court against their conviction and death penalty in the case. After exhausting the remedy of filing curative pleas, the convicts can send their mercy pleas to the President. In case the pleas are dismissed, the authorities can seek death warrants from a local court to execute them.