The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the curative petition filed by last of the four death-row convicts in the Nirbhaya case, seeking commutation of his death penalty to life imprisonment.
The curative petition was heard by a bench of justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan in the chamber of Justice Ramana.
Pawan Kumar Gupta, 25, against whom the death warrant has been issued for execution on March 3 along with the three other condemned prisoners, claimed juvenility to seek commutation of sentence to life imprisonment.
He filed the curative plea through lawyer A P Singh seeking setting aside of the apex court's earlier verdicts on appeals and review petitions in the case.
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Advocate A P Singh said he had filed an application in the apex court registry on Sunday seeking an oral hearing on Pawan's curative plea in the open court.
Pawan was the last death row convict in the case to move the top court with his curative plea, the final legal remedy available to a person.
The Supreme Court has already rejected the curative petitions of the remaining three convicts.
A fresh death warrant has also been issued for the four convicts -- Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh -- setting the time of their hanging at 6 am on March 3 at Delhi's Tihar Jail.
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The mercy petitions of three convicts -- Mukesh, Vinay and Akshay -- have already been dismissed by the President.
The apex court had earlier dismissed separate pleas filed by Mukesh and Vinay challenging the rejection of their mercy petitions by the President.
Akshay has not yet challenged the rejection of his mercy petition.
The four were convicted in the brutal gang rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, in Delhi. The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.
