A Delhi judge on Tuesday issued a black warrant for hanging four people who raped and tortured a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a cold December night in 2012. He will be hanged at 7 am on January 22, the court-ordered.
The victim’s mother said that the black warrant and the hanging of the four convicts would empower women and “strengthen people’s confidence in the judicial system”.
The black warrant is formally called the warrant of death penalty form, however, if the guilty exercise their right to appeal or file a mercy petition, they will be held or revoked.
The court has given 14 days to the convicts to use their legal remedies which may include a remedial petition in the Supreme Court or a mercy petition to the President.
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The lower court delivered its guilty verdict within a year of gang-raping a young para-medicine student, which provoked nationwide outrage and led to the first overhaul of the nation’s rape laws in years. But it was much later that the High Court confirmed the death penalty.
In 2017, the Supreme Court rejected the first set of appeals against conviction.
Judge Satish Kumar Arora issued the warrant at the request of the police and the victim’s mother, who had observed the 2017 verdict of the apex court as “justice” while rejecting the appeal against capital punishment.
Yet two years later, waiting for the four men to be sent to the gallows, the victim’s mother was shedding tears last month when Judge Satish Kumar Arora deferred the case, which indicated that she filed by one of the four convicts Wants to wait for the mercy petition. To be decided first.
At Tuesday’s hearing, he had heard government counsel arguing that a black warrant could be issued before the convicts could exercise their legal options. The suggestion that the court should wait for the petitions to be filed by the convicts and it was decided that there is a delaying strategy, the government counsel argued.
After the December hearing, the jail authorities had issued a notice on December 18 to the convicts – Akshay, Vinay, Pawan, and Mukesh – who are on death sentence for the gangrape.
One of the six accused in the bus, a woman who was raped, was lightly locked up because she was not an adult. Another allegedly committed suicide in prison. The remaining four were convicted and sentenced to death.
Three of them filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against his execution, which was dismissed last year. As the Tihar jail authorities began preparing for their execution, the fourth convict filed a review petition in the Supreme Court which was dismissed.
