Tihar authorities delaying in handing over docs, Nirbhaya convicts tell court
Alleging that the Tihar jail authorities are not handing over certain documents, an advocate appearing for three of the four death row convicts moved an application in Delhi High Court on Friday (January 24).
Pointing out that the documents are required for filing a curative petition, AP Singh appearing for the death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case alleged that the jail authorities are yet to give the documents which are required to file the mercy petition for Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and curative petitions for Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Singh (25). The plea is likely to be taken up for hearing on Saturday.
The apex court recently dismissed the curative petitions of other two convicts — Vinay and Mukesh Singh (32). Mukesh’s mercy petition was rejected by the President earlier this month. The hanging of all four is to take place on February 1 at 6 am according to the court order.
In his petition, the lawyer said he had expressed “an urgent will to file a mercy petition before the relevant authorities and undertook several steps to obtain relevant information to file it”. He said Vinay wanted to attach his personal diary containing 70 pages with the mercy petition and had asked the jail authorities to provide.
However, the diary is yet to be provided and because of this the plea could not be filed, he said. The counsel said he had also sought some documents of convicts Pawan and Akshay which have not been provided. The petition sought a direction to jail authorities to provide the documents on “an urgent basis”.
Earlier, on Friday, the third-generation hangman Pawan Kumar said, he feels zero sympathy for the four men he is due to hang next month. “The people who are going to die are like beasts, not humans,” the father-of-seven told AFP in Meerut. “They are cruel people and that’s why they are going to lose their lives,” the 54-year-old said.
The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi by six people before she was thrown out on the road. She was flown to a hospital in Singapore where she died.
(With inputs from agencies)
