December 16 gangrape case: Convicts oppose appointment of amicus

NEW DELHI: Two of the four death row convicts of the sensational December 16 gangrape and murder case have written to the Chief Justice of India T S Thakur, seeking removal of two senior lawyers, appointed as amicus curiae by the apex court in the matter, their counsel said.

Convicts Pawan Kumar Gupta and Vinay Sharma, who are currently lodged in Tihar Jail, have alleged in a letter that senior advocates Raju Ramachandran and Sanjay Hegde, who have been appointed as amicus curiae by a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra, have spoken against them in media debates related to the incident.

The letter, copies of which were circulated by their counsel A P Singh to the media, claimed that they have been falsely implicated in the case and the two senior lawyers should be removed in the interest of justice.

The other two convicts in the case are Mukesh and Akshay. These four convicts had approached the apex court against Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict which had observed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and had upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court.

A 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in South Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The prime accused, Ram Singh, was found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated.

On August 31, 2013, another accused, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was convicted and sentenced to three years in a reformation home. He was released from observation home in December last year.