Three days ahead of scheduled hanging, Nirhaya case convict Pawan Kumar Gupta filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court on Friday, challenging the order of conviction and sentenced in the 2012 Delhi gang rape-murder case.
He seeks the commutation of the death penalty to a life sentence in the petition. This is the last available legal remedy for him.
Death warrants are in force for the execution of fourconvicts in the Nirbhaya case on March 3 at 6 AM.
The curative petitions of the other three convicts, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma, and Akshay Kumar were earlier dismissed by a 5-judge bench comprising Justices N.V. Ramana, Arun Mishra, R.F. Narima, R, Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.
Pawan Gupta had also attempted to raise a claim that he was a juvenile at the time of the offense. But the plea of juvenility was rejected concurrently by the Trial Court, Delhi High Court and also the Apex Court.
The death penalty was upheld by the Supreme Court on May 5, 2017. Later, in July 2018, the SC dismissed the review petitions filed by Mukesh, Vinay, and Pawan. In December last year, the review petition of Akshay was dismissed.
