Breaking: Supreme Court dismisses Review Petition of Nirbhaya convicts

The Supreme Court today dismissed the Review petitions filed by the convicts in 2012 Delhi gang rape case also known as Nirbhaya case.

It confirmed the death penalty awarded to the four convicts while holding that no grounds were made out for exercise of its review jurisdiction.

The Court also stated that it shall exercise its review jurisdiction only when there are apparent errors resulting in miscarriage of justice. Convicts cannot be allowed to re-argue their case under the garb of review petition, the Court noted.

The judgement was delivered by Justice Ashok Bhushan for the Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, Justice R. Banumathi and Justice Bhushan. The Court had reserved its judgement in the case on May 4 this year.

The review petitions had challenged the judgment of the Supreme Court delivered on May 5, 2017 confirming death penalty for all the four accused.

On December 16, 2012, the country was shaken by the news of six men in Delhi committing a gruesome and ghastly act of gang raping a young woman in a moving bus. The victim succumbed to her injuries two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore. The six accused were apprehended by the police.

Of the six accused, the main accused committed suicide in the Tihar jail during the course of the trial and the juvenile accused was sentenced to three years in a remand home upon conviction. The remaining four were handed a death penalty by the Additional Sessions Judge.

The four convicts appealed against this before the Delhi High Court which upheld the lower court verdict. The Supreme Court too upheld this death punishment leading to this review petition.

Read the timeline of the case here.

Read the judgment  below.