A Delhi court on Saturday, February 22 dismissed a petition filed by one of the Nirbhaya convicts seeking treatment for mental illness, schizophrenia and injuries in head and arm.
While dismissing the plea, Additional Sessions Judge Dharmendra Rana observed, "It is evident that the convict is not only being provided regular medical care, but regular supportive therapy sessions are also being conducted for him by specialists."
The convict -- Vinay -- allegedly attempted to hurt himself by banging his head against a wall in the jail earlier this week.
While seeking a direction to shift Vinay to the Institute of Human Behaviour & Allied Sciences (IHBAS) in Delhi for "high-level treatment", his counsel A.P. Singh had contended that his client is suffering from mental illness and schizophrenia.
Vinay has exhausted all these legal remedies. He, along with three other convicts, are scheduled to be hanged on March 3 at 6 a.m. for the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old girl in the national capital in December 2012.
One of the convicts, Pawan, is yet to avail the legal remedy of either curative or mercy petition.
SC dismisses Vinay's plea
The Supreme Court on February 14 dismissed the plea of Vinay Sharma, challenging the rejection of his mercy petition by President Kovind.
A bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna said that as pointed out earlier, the case records, judgments of the trial court, the High Court and the Supreme Court, clean copy of records of the case, nominal roll of the petitioner, medical report of the petitioner, Social Investigation Report and other relevant documents were forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
"The note put up before the President of India is a detailed one and all the relevant materials were placed before the President and upon consideration of same, the mercy petition was rejected," the court said.
As a result, it said: "We do not find any ground for the exercise of judicial review of the order of the President of India rejecting the petitioner's mercy petition and this writ petition is liable to be dismissed."
2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder case
23-year-old Nirbhaya was gang-raped and tortured on December 16, 2012, which led to her death. All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused committed suicide in Tihar Jail.
The remaining four -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar (31) -- will be executed together on March 3 at 6 am.
