Nirbhaya gang-rape: SC to hear convicts' plea challenging Delhi HC order

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday will hear the plea filed by December 16 gang-rape convicts Mukesh, Akshay, Pawan and Vinay, challenging the Delhi High court order which had sentenced the four convicts to the gallows after keeping in view the fact that it was a rarest of the rare case.

The appeal, which is being heard by the Apex Court bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, is at the fag end of the case.

Earlier, the apex court had declined the request by two amici curiae - senior counsel Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay R Hegde to withdraw from assisting the court in the hearing of appeals by the convicts in the gang rape case.

Asking both to continue assisting the court in the hearing of the appeals by the four accused convicted and sentenced to death, the three-judge bench comprising of justices Dipak Misra, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan said: "We can appreciate the anguish expressed by the learned amici curiae".

Six people gang-raped a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in a moving bus and thrashed her and her male friend. They then violently raped and attacked her, and threw both of them from the moving bus on Dec 16. The woman succumbed to her injuries in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.

The incident led to large-scale protests across the country, forcing the government of the day to make strict and punitive laws related to harassment of women.

One of the accused, Ram Singh hanged himself in prison, while another man, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted in August and will serve the maximum sentence of three years in a reform home.

Meanwhile, on December 3, amicus curiae Sanjay Hegde questioned the evidence produced by the prosecution in the gang-rape case and came out with certain points putting a question on the merit of evidence.

According to Hegde, one of the convicts, Mukesh, was not with the prime culprit Ram Singh when the offence was committed, since their mobile locations were found to be different on that night.