New Delhi, Dec 10 (IANS) Delhi is a gas chamber then why hand down death penalty, said Akshay Kumar Singh, one of the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, while moving the Supreme Court seeking review of its 2017 judgment of sentencing all the four convicts to death.
“Everyone is aware of what is happening in Delhi-NCR with regard to water and air. Life is becoming short, then why death penalty,” asked Akshay in the review petition filed through advocate A.P. Singh.
His petition referred to the Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads to argue that there was a time, in Satyug, when people lived for a long time. Not any longer, he said.
“The death penalty is the premeditated and cold blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice,” he said, explaining it as an effort by the government to “promote simplistic responses to complex human problems rather than pursing their root causes”.
The petition sought systemic reforms in the criminal justice system and argued that the certainty of punishment was an effective deterrent, not severity of punishment.
The Supreme Court on July 9, 2018, had dismissed the review pleas filed by the other convicts in the case, except Akshay who did not file a review petition. Singh filed the review plea for his client in the top court on Tuesday.
Akshya pleaded that the air quality of Delhi has deteriorated, and the capital city has literally become a gas chamber. Even the water in the city is also full of poison, the plea claimed.
A 23-year-old paramedic student 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. Later, she was thrown out of the bus at an isolated place. The victim succumbed to her injuries on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore.
The apex court had earlier dismissed the review pleas by Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24), ruling that no ground was established by the accused for seeking a review of the death penalty.
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