Kumar Singh -- have approached the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court's order which had confirmed the death penalty awarded to them by the trial court.
Kumar Singh -- have approached the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court's order which had confirmed the death penalty awarded to them by the trial court.
During the hearing, advocates A P Singh and M L Sharma, representing the four convicts, said that they should be given a chance to reform and considering the mitigating factors, the court should not award them death penalty.
They also raised questions about the evidence collected by the police in the matter.
However, Luthra countered their submissions and said, "They have not been given any mitigating circumstances which could warrant reduction of the sentence from death penalty which was awarded to them."
He said as per report of the Tihar jail authorities, the conduct of these convicts in the prison was "unsatisfactory", a submission refuted by the defence counsel.
The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and raped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012.
On February 3, the apex court bench prima facie agreed with the contention of Ramachandran that the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), relating to sentencing of convicts, has not been followed in letter and spirit by the trial court.
It was submitted that section 235 of the CrPC provides that an accused, in the event of conviction, would be heard by on the question of sentencing individually before the trial judge passes the order awarding punishment.
The bench had then mulled ways to rectify the apparent error and said there are two modes -- either the case be remanded back to the trial court to pass a fresh order on the sentence or the apex court itself hears this aspect of the matter afresh.
The trial court had awarded death penalty to the four convicts. Prime accused Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide in his cell in Tihar jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated.
Earlier also, the court had asked the convicts to file their response detailing mitigating circumstances on the issue of sentencing.
The convicts had approached the apex court against the high court's March 13, 2014 verdict which had observed that their offence fell in the rarest of the rare category and had upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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