The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the curative petition of two death row convicts in 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case on January 14. A five-judge Bench of Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan will hear the petition filed by Vinay Sharma and Mukesh. The duo had moved a curative petition in the top court after a Delhi court issued a death warrant in their name and announced January 22 as the date of their execution. Besides them, two other convicts named Pawan and Akshay are also slated to be executed on the same day at 7 am in Delhi’s Tihar Jail premises. They were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in the national capital on the night of December 16, 2012. The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya, died at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment. A curative petition is the last judicial resort available for redressal of grievances. It is decided by the judges in-chamber. If it is rejected, they are legally bound to move a mercy petition. It is filed before the President who has the power to commute it to life imprisonment. The court after issuing a black warrant in their name gave them two weeks’ time to file both the curative and mercy petition.
