All four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case – Pawan Kumar Gupta, Mukesh Singh, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur – were hanged to death at 5:30 am on Friday, 20 March. They were declared dead after a doctor examined them, said Tihar jail authorities, one hour after the hanging.
This comes more than seven years after the brutal incident that shook the country.
In the last 24 hours, courts rebuffed five separate attempts by the convicts to stay the execution. Three petitions were dismissed by the apex court , one each by the Delhi High Court and the executing trial court.
In a late-night hearing, the Supreme Court earlier dismissed the final attempt by the convicts to stay the execution, saying there are no grounds for Pawan Gupta’s petition to review the President's rejection of his second mercy plea. The Delhi High Court too dismissed the petition by Nirbhaya case convicts in a late-night hearing on Thursday,
Execution Deferred Three Times
This is the first time that four men have been hanged together in Tihar Jail, South Asia's largest prison complex that houses more than 16,000 inmates. The executions were carried out after the men exhausted every possible legal avenue to escape the gallows. Their attempts only postponed the inevitable by less than two months after the first date of execution was set for 22 January.
They were hanged at 5.30 am, Director General of Prison Sandeep Goel said.
Six people, including the four convicts and the juvenile, were named as accused.
While Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail days after the trial began in the case, the juvenile was released in 2015 after spending three years in a correctional home.
The death warrants were deferred by a court thrice on the grounds that the convicts had not exhausted all their legal remedies and that the mercy petition of one or the other was before the president.
On 5 March , a trial court issued fresh death warrants for 20 March at 5.30 am as the final date for the execution.
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