New Delhi: A Five-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court has this morning rejected the curative petition filed by Delhi gang rape convict Pawan Kumar Gupta.

The SC was hearing ‘in chamber’ the curative plea of Pawan Kumar Gupta, one of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case — a day before scheduled hanging. A Five-Judge Bench headed by Justice N.V. Ramana said no case is made out for re-examining the conviction and the punishment of the convict.

Pawan, 25, was the last death row convict in the case to have moved the SC with his curative plea, the final legal remedy available to a person. With his curative petition dismissed, Pawan can now file a mercy plea before President Ram Nath Kovind. 

The mercy petitions of the three other convicts have already been dismissed. Pawan, against whom the death warrant was issued for execution on Mar.3 along with the three others, had claimed juvenility to seek commutation of sentence to life imprisonment. Advocate A.P. Singh filed an application in the SC registry on Sunday seeking an oral hearing on Pawan’s curative plea in the open Court.

In the curative plea before the SC, Pawan pleaded that his age on the day of the offence was 16 years and two months as per the school records last attended by him and “the age has not been determined in accordance with the procedures laid down under the Juvenile Justice Act.”

This information was suppressed by the State throughout the proceedings, Pawan had claimed. He was the lone convict who had not exhausted his legal remedies of filing a curative petition and subsequent mercy plea with the President.

Pawan and another convict Akshay Singh also moved a trial Court on Saturday seeking a stay on the execution of death warrants. While Akshay claimed that he has filed a fresh mercy petition before the President of India, which is pending, Pawan said he moved a curative plea before the Supreme Court.

The trial court on Feb.17 issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for Mar. 3 at 6 am for the four convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Kumar Gupta, (25) Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Singh (31) — in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.

The mercy petitions of three convicts — Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay — have already been dismissed by the President. The SC had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President.

A 23-year-old physiotherapy intern, who came to be known as ‘Nirbhaya’ (fearless), was gang raped and savagely assaulted in a moving bus in South Delhi on Dec.16, 2012. She died a fortnight later. Six people, including the four convicts and a juvenile, were named as accused. Ram Singh, the sixth accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar jail days after the trial began in the case. The juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.