2012 Delhi gangrape case: Delhi HC reserves order on convict Mukesh Singh's plea seeking quashing of death penalty

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday reserved its order on a petition filed by one of the four 2012 Delhi gangrape convicts — Mukesh Singh — challenging the trial court’s order dismissing his plea seeking quashing of death penalty claiming that he was not in the city when the crime was committed.

A bench of Justice Brijesh Sethi reserved the order after hearing arguments from both sides and is likely to pronounce the order later today.

Advocate Rahul Mehra, the standing counsel of the state, opposed the plea and said it is a desperate attempt to stall the execution and that we should not fall prey to this attempt and Mukesh’s  application deserved to be dismissed.

“What prevented them from telling about torture if he was facing it in jail (sic). Mukesh could have written a letter to the competent authority about the torture,” Mehra submitted.

In his plea, filed through advocate ML Sharma, Mukesh has sought to set aside trial court order passed on 17 March, which had dismissed the petition.

The petitioner said that the trial is the outcome of concealment of vital documents by fixing the petitioner in place of actual accused persons which is liable to be examined within the filed evidence on records.

A trial court in Delhi had, on Tuesday, also sent the matter to the Bar Council of India for appropriate sensitization observing that the conduct of the counsel for the convict needs to be brought to notice.

This comes as the four convicts in the 2012 case —Mukesh Singh, Akshay Singh Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Sharma —  are scheduled to be hanged at 5:30 am on 20 March.

The case pertains to the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of 16 December, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in the national capital. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.