Asha Devi, mother of the gang-rape victim, hailed the verdict and said that the day when all the convicts will be hanged, will be the biggest day for her. "This is a big day for me. I had been struggling for the last 7 years. But the biggest day will be 22nd January when they (convicts) will be hanged," she told the media.
A five-judge Bench of Justices N V Ramana, Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan heard their plea and pronounced the judgment. The two convicts 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.
After the dismissal, they are now left with one last legal option, that is to file a mercy petition to the President of India. The convicts can do so within seven days from the date on which the superintendent of jail issues a notice to do so. The president has the power to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment.
A Tihar Jail official later in the evening told news ANI that "Convict Mukesh Singh has moved mercy petition today".
A Delhi court had on January 7 issued death warrants against all the four convicts - Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) - and ordered they be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail, over seven years after the brutal crime sparked outrage and anger across the country.
Before the hearing, Asha Devi, said she was confident that the petition of the convicts would be rejected by the court. Watch here, what she said while speaking to ABP News:
All the four convicts are likely to be hanged simultaneously. The jail authorities were also holding conversations with them on a daily basis to ensure that they were in a good mental state, the official said.
The court order was pronounced on applications moved by Nirbhaya's parents and the prosecution (Delhi government) seeking issuance of death warrants against the convicts.
The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya or fearless, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road.
Ram Singh, one of the six accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.
(inputs from agencies)