Nirbhaya case: President Ram Nath Kovind rejects mercy petition filed by death row convict Mukesh Singh

President of India Ram Nath Kovind on Friday rejected the mercy petition of death row convict Mukesh Singh, who had earlier been sentenced to death along with three others in connection with the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case (known as the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case).

Earlier, it was reported that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had forwarded Mukesh Singh's mercy petition to the President on Thursday recommending its rejection, sources stated.

The mercy plea was also rejected by the Delhi government, following which the petition was forwarded to the Lieutenant Governor, who had sent it to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to, in turn, be sent to the President.

Reacting to the development, Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi said that she welcomed the decision of President Ram Nath Kovind to reject the mercy petition but her daughter will finally get justice on January 22 when the death row convicts are hanged. She added that the filing of the curative and mercy petitions by the death row convicts is just a means to delay the process of hanging, taking advantage of the bureaucracy of the system.

Asha Devi has been fighting a long and hard legal battle for over seven years, determined to see the criminals hanged. To be precise, it took more than seven years for her to see the light of justice. Why the legal system in this country is so wound-up that it takes such an abnormally long time to close a case, even after the establishment of a fast-track court for the proceedings, remains up for investigation later.

A Delhi Court had on January 7 issued death warrants against all four convicts involved in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder incident. According to the order, the rapists will be hanged on January 22 at 7 AM.

However, legal experts have noted that owing to the judicial procedures provided under India's legal system, it is possible that the death row convicts are delaying their ultimate fate by filing curative petitions and once they get rejected, sending mercy petitions to the President, one by one.

After the 23-year-old psychotherapy intern, dubbed 'Nirbhaya', was brutally gang-raped and murdered in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South Delhi on December 16, 2012, the incident generated tremendous public outroar and media coverage demanding justice for the victim.

The accused in the case - Akshay Kumar, Pawan Gupta, Mukesh Singh, Ram Singh, Vinay Sharma, and a minor boy - were promptly arrested under charges of sexual assault and murder. In 2013, one of the accused, Ram Singh, died in police custody of possible suicide. All of the remaining accused were convicted by a fast-track trial court of rape and murder, and while the juvenile was given the maximum sentence of three years imprisonment at a reform facility, the rest were sentenced to death by hanging. Subsequently, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court upheld this judgment.

Earlier in December, a plea was filed by the victim's parents to expedite the death sentence of the four convicts. The accused were pronounced before the court via video conferencing. The media was asked to leave the courtroom. Paramilitary forces were deployed outside the court.

This was a brief history of the case proceedings. Finally, on January 7, the Delhi Court order the issuing of the death warrants against all four convicts of the 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case and fixed a date for the execution.