Nirbhaya: SC dismisses Akshay's plea challenging rejection of his second mercy petition

The Supreme Court Thursday dismissed death-row convict Akshay Kumar's plea challenging the rejection of his second mercy petition by the President.

A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna said no ground was made out in Akshay's plea for judicial review of the decision rejecting the mercy petition.

Akshay had filed the second mercy petition on Wednesday which was rejected by the President on Thursday.


He had filed his first mercy plea on January 29 which was rejected on January 31.

On March 5 this year, a trial court had issued fresh warrants with March 20, 5.30 am, as the date for the execution of the four convicts in the case -- Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay (31).

Akshay, in his plea, also raised the grounds of solitary confinement, torture, and press interviews of persons in authority like union ministers and Delhi government ministers who advocated execution of the convicts.

Besides, he said the rejection of his mercy petition by the President was influenced.

The top court however rejected all the grounds raised in the petition and said that it did not find any ground that of non application of mind by the President while rejecting Akshay's mercy plea.

It said that the ground of judicial review of rejection of mercy petition by the President is very limited and court has to look whether there was any application of mind or not.

The court also rejected the ground that a divorce petition filed by Akshay's wife was pending before a family court, saying pendency of these petitions cannot be a ground for staying the death warrants.

The petition also mentioned pending pleas for remission filed before Delhi Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. However, the court refused to consider it as a reason to stay death warrants.