New Delhi: On the death row, Nirbhaya case convict Akshay filed his review petition in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, questioning why give him death penalty when his life is going to be short even otherwise due to bad air and water in Delhi.
Filed through his lawyer AP Singh, Akshay’s petition maintains that he does not deserve death given the environmental conditions in the national capital.
“It is important to note here that air quality of Delhi-NCR and metro city is like a gas chamber.. Not only this, the water of Delhi-NCR is also full of poison. This fact is proved by the Government of India report submitted in the Parliament,” read his plea.
It added: “Everyone is aware of what is happening in Delhi-NCR with regard to air and water. Life is going to be short, then why death penalty?”
It said why give Akshay death when age is reducing. “It is mentioned in our Ved, Purans, Upanishad that in the age of Satyug, people lived thousands of years. In Treta Yug, a man used to live for thousands of years…but now it is Kalyug. In this era, age of a human being is reduced much. It has now come down to 50-60 years,” contended the petition.
The petition also emphasised that very few people reach up to age if 80-90 years. “When a person faces the stark realities of life and passes through the adverse situation, then he is no better than a dead man,” stated Akshay’s plea.
It further said that rich are rarely sent to gallows and when the judiciary cannot apply uniform standards, it has no right to give death penalty to anyone.
Akshay is the last of the four convicts in the case to move a review petition in the apex court.
The top court had in July 2018 junked the review petition of three other convicts — Mukesh, Vinay and Pawan.
The court had held there was no ground to reconsider its May 2017 judgment in which maximum sentence for all four were affirmed after noting that their crime had shocked the collective conscience of entire society and that they deserved no mercy for their diabolical crime.
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Source: News18