The petition filed by Vinay Sharma, one of the convicts in 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case, to the Supreme Court against the rejection of the mercy petition by the President was dismissed by the court on Friday.

Sharma had claimed in the apex court that President Ram Nath Kovind while rejecting his petition had not considered the ‘mental stability’ he suffered due to torture in jail.

Denying his claim, the centre said he was fit and of sound mind.

The convict in his submission said that all the relevant records including one pertaining to his mental illness had not been submitted to the president in his appeal. On this, the centre had produced a medical report dated February 12 which showed that he was not suffering from any mental illness.

The four convicts in the gangrape case — which triggered a massive nationwide protest in 2012 – have been exploring every legal option one by one to stretch the date of their hanging as much as they can.

This was the last legal option left out for Sharma as his review and curative petitions to the Supreme Court and mercy petition to the President were exhausted, and the last option of a judicial review of president’s order by the Supreme Court has also ended today.

In a separate development, a Supreme Court judge, Justice R Banumathi was fainted while dictating an order on the centre’s petition seeking separate executions for the four death convicts.

Justice Banumathi regained consciousness and was subsequently taken to her chamber in a wheelchair. The plea was been heard by three judges bench which comprised Justices AS Bopanna and Ashok Bhushan as well. Further the bench said that the order will be passed in-chamber.

The savage case of gangrape and murder had took many twist and turn in last few months, as the date of execution has been shifted twice as the convicts’ lawyer had used the legal tricks very wisely to make it done.

Earlier, mother of the gangrape victim had alleged that AP Singh, lawyer of the convicts in the brutal case had challenged her by saying, “the hanging will never happen,”

On January 31, a trial court had stayed the execution of four convicts namely, Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) until further orders. The decision came few hours before the hanging which was scheduled for February 1 at 6 am.

The brutal gangrape and murder case in which the four convicts are sentenced is of December 16, 2012, when a paramedic student was brutally gangraped by a group of five men on a moving bus. The sixth convict was a juvenile. Later the victim succumbed to her injuries in the hospital.

One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused committed suicide in Tihar Jail. The four convicts were sentenced to death by a trial court in September 2013, and the verdict confirmed by the Delhi High Court in March 2014 and upheld in May 2017 by the Supreme Court, which also dismissed their review petitions.

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