New Delhi: The mother of the 23-year-old paramedic student, who was raped and brutally assaulted by six men in the national capital in December 2012, on Thursday said the legal tactics being employed by the convicts are only to delay the case and blamed the government and court for not doing enough.
After the gruesome incident, the paramedic student was flown to Singapore for treatment, where she succumbed to her injuries.
In a scathing attack on the system that has allowed the convicts to delay their execution, Nirbhaya’s mother Asha Devi said the government and court did not seem to be helping the victim’s family, but the convicts.
Her remarks came after a Delhi court directed the Tihar Jail authorities on Thursday to file a proper report by Friday on the status of the scheduled execution of four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case.
Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora passed the directions after the jail authorities said they had written to the Delhi government on the issue of the scheduled execution on January 22 in view of the pending mercy plea of one of the convicts.
Rahul Mehra, standing counsel for the Arvind Kejriwal-government, made a statement in the Delhi High Court on Wednesday that hanging cannot take place on January 22, as fixed by the trial judge, since one of the convicts, Mukesh Kumar Singh, has now moved a mercy plea before the President.
Asha Devi said, “All this is happening to delay the case. We are being made to run from one court to the other daily. It is as if someone else committed the crime and we are being punished. For now, it’s just Mukesh… There are three more (convicts Vinay Sharma, Akshay Kumar Singh and Pawan Gupta). No one is talking about them. The government lawyer never said in the court that three more are there. They are being helped by the government and court.”
The court was hearing a plea moved by one of the four death-row convicts in the case, Mukesh, seeking postponement of the date of his execution on the ground that his mercy petition was pending with the president.
Nirbhaya’s father said the convicts will not be able to escape the gallows, despite all the legal tactics they may employ.
He said the court will decide on the future course of action on Friday. “We have not lost hope. There is no law for the victim’s family, but there are legal remedies available to the convicts, which is why the problems are arising,” he said. However, he said they had not lost hope and their fight for justice will continue.
“Justice is not far and their hanging is not far. They should prepare themselves for the hanging. They might delay it, but it will happen,” he added.
(With inputs from PTI)
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Source: News18