Nirbhaya rape and murder case: convicts to be hanged on Feb 1, 2020
Fresh death warrants issued.
New Delhi
Delhi court on Friday issued fresh death warrants against the four Nirbhaya convicts and set February 1, 2020 at 6 am, a new date and time for their hanging.
Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora was hearing a plea by one of the convicts, Mukesh Singh, who asked that his execution be postponed from January 22.
Authorities at Delhi’s Tihar Jail sought the issuance of fresh death warrants against the convicts earlier in the day.
Public Prosecutor Irfan Ahmed told the court that a mercy plea filed Mukesh Singh had been rejected by President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday.
Mukesh Singh and five others gangraped a 23-year-old Delhi paramedic student — now known as Nirbhaya, — in December 2012. It was a display of brutality so unhinged that Indians, left shaking with fury, poured into the streets to demand justice. The victim soon died of her injuries.
On Friday, Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi expressed displeasure with the delay in the hanging, and said the convicts were getting what they wanted.
She has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi “with folded hands” to hang them on January 22, and broke down in an interview as she tore into political parties for using Nirbhaya’s death for their own gain.
One of Nirbhaya’s rapists killed himself in jail and another, a juvenile, was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
