Nirbhaya: Delhi Court seeks report from Jail Authorities in convicts' plea to stay execution of death warrant

A Delhi Court has agreed to hear an application filed by the convicts in the Nirbhaya case for a stay on the execution of their death warrant.

The application is filed in light of one of the convicts, Pawan, having filed his curative petition before the Supreme Court and a "complete" mercy plea filed by Akshay before the President of India.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana today sought a report form the Jail authorities and fixed the date of hearing as Monday, March 2 at 10AM.

The death warrant, as it is now, has fixed the date for execution of the convicts on March 3. Before that, the Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the curative petition filed by Pawan, in chamber, on March 2 at 10.25 ph,jlAM.

When the instant application was taken up today, the Court pulled up counsel for convicts Akshay and Pawan, Advocate AP Singh for failing to bring all the facts on record before in the application. This pertained to failure of the counsel to bring forth details pertaining to the filing of the subsequent mercy plea by Akshay after the first one, which was claimed to be incomplete by Singh, was rejected by the President.

The Court was told by Singh that a "complete" mercy plea has been filed by one of the convicts, Akshay, after the previous one was rejected by the President of India.

This aspect, the Court noted, was not brought on record in the application and sought for the application to reflect details concerning the mercy plea filed hy Akshay and its dismissal or rejection by the President.

Singh has claimed that the convicts were not intimated of the rejection of the mercy plea by the President.

Court told Singh to file a complete application mentioning all details pursuant to the rejection of the mercy plea which Singh claims was "incomplete" and whether or not the parties were intimated of such rejection.

Judge Rana said that these details needed to be brought on record to ensure that the jail authorities can either refute the claim or respond to the same.

Singh was also told by the Court to file a fresh vakalatnama for Pawan Gupta considering Singh had earlier been discharged as his Counsel.

Singh today told the Court that he has filed the curative petition in the Supreme Court on behalf of Pawan and he was back to represent him again.