The President on Saturday rejected the mercy plea of Vinay Kumar Sharma, one of the convicts in the December 16 Nirbhaya gangrape-murder. He had filed the petition on Wednesday.
Earlier on January 14, the apex court had dismissed the curative petition of Vinay against the death penalty awarded to him.
On Friday, a Delhi court stayed till further orders the hanging of three Nirbhaya gangrape-murder case death row convicts, that was scheduled for February 1. While staying the execution, the Delhi court observed, "the courts of this country cannot afford to adversely discriminate any convict, including death row convict, in pursuit of his legal remedies, by turning Nelson's eye towards him."
The three convicts - Akshay Kumar Singh, Pawan Gupta, and Vinay Kumar Sharma - had moved the court seeking a stay on their hanging. The fourth convict Mukesh Kumar Singh has exhausted all his legal remedies.
The four convicts were scheduled to be hanged at 6 AM on February 1 after a Delhi court issued death warrants against them earlier this month. This was the second death warrant issued after Mukesh filed a mercy petition to the President and several pleas in various courts.
Earlier, on January 7, the court had fixed January 22 as the hanging date.
A 23-year-old psychotherapy student, dubbed by media as 'Nirbhaya', was gang-raped and brutalised on a moving bus on December 16, 2012, before being dumped on the road. She was airlifted to Singapore where she died on December 29, 2012.
Six people, including a juvenile, were arrested for the crime. The juvenile was released after serving a three-year term at a juvenile home, one convict allegedly committed suicide in jail while four others - Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were sentenced to death.