The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected review petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the convicts in the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case.
A three-judge bench headed by Justice R Banumathi earlier today reserved its judgement on the review plea filed by death row convict Akshay Kumar Singh.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Delhi government, told the bench that there are certain crimes where humanity cries and this is one of them.
Advocate A P Singh, appearing for the convict said that death penalty is a primitive method of punishment. “Execution kills the crime, not the criminal,” Singh added.
Singh further said that use of death penalty did not seem to be a deterrent effect to criminals and convicts.
A new bench also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna was hearing the please in the case as Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde on Tuesday recused himself from hearing the review petition in Nirbhaya case.
Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the five men convicted for the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi in 2012, had sought review of his death penalty.
Kumar was the last to file a review petition on the death penalty.
The Court had already rejected the pleas filed by other convicts – Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh.
The 23-year-old paramedic student was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 in a moving bus in the national capital.
One of the six men accused was a juvenile.
She passed away at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore while undergoing the treatment.
