3 Nirbhaya Convicts Move UN Court In Latest Attempt To Stall Execution

Three of the four men convicted in the 2012 gang-rape and killing of Nirbhaya today petitioned the United Nation's International Court of Justice (ICJ) in another eleventh-hour attempt to stall their hanging, scheduled on Friday.

Akshay Singh, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma approached the World Court on a day the fourth convict, Mukesh Singh, was told by the Supreme Court that he had no legal remedy left after his mercy petition and curative plea were both rejected.

On December 16, 2012, the young woman who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped on a moving bus and tortured, in a savage assault that led to her death days later and changed an entire nation forever.

Ram Singh, one of the six men arrested after the incident, allegedly committed suicide in Delhi's Tihar Jail. The youngest, who was just short of 18, was released after three years in a reform home.

After three previous dates of hanging came and went, the four men, Akshay Thakur, 31, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Sharma, 26, and Mukesh Singh, 32, are expected to be hanged at 5.30 am on Friday. 

President Ram Nath Kovind has rejected the mercy petitions of all four convicts. Akshay Singh Thakur has filed another petition claiming that mercy plea rejected by the President did not have "complete facts".

This morning, as Mukesh Singh asked to file a new curative petition, the Supreme Court said: "Circumstances say there is no remedy left. You (Mukesh Singh) have availed mercy plea. It was rejected. Warrants issued. Curative petition has been dismissed. What's the remedy left?" 

The ICJ was last in the news over the dispute over Indian man Kulbhushan Jadhav's death sentence in Pakistan