BREAKING NEWS: SC dismisses Nirbhaya case convict Pawan Gupta's review plea claiming juvenility

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday (January 31) dismissed Nirbhaya gang-rape case convict Pawan Gupta’s petition claiming that he was a juvenile when the offence took place. The review plea filed earlier in the day was taken up for consideration in-chamber by a bench comprising Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A S Bopanna.

Pawan had earlier filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in Supreme Court claiming that he was a juvenile when he committed the crime in 2012 and this fact was not taken into account by Delhi High Court during the proceedings in the case.

Prior to that, Pawan had filed the same plea in the Delhi High Court too but it was rejected by the court. On January 17 (Friday), Pawan approached the apex court challenging the Delhi High Court order in this case.

Pawan`s lawyer A P Singh had claimed in the petition that his client's date of birth as per school record is October 8, 1996, but this fact was ignored by Delhi High Court. 

Pawan has contended that the impugned order was passed in ignorance of the new evidence in the form of the school register of the school first attended by him, which conclusively shows that he was a juvenile on the date of the offence.

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He was held to be a major by an order of Magistrate passed in 2013. The death row convict stated that the order was passed without hearing him. He alleged that the police had not produced the school records in the case. No opportunity was given to his counsel to examine the papers submitted by police on the plea of juvenility, he stated in the petition.

He submitted that the school certificate came to light only after 2017, when his lawyers were collecting materials for preparing an affidavit detailing his mitigating circumstances, following the directions of the Supreme Court on February 3, 2017. He argued that the school leaving certificate showed his date of birth as October 8, 1996.

It may be noted that the trial court had earlier ordered the hanging of four Nirbhaya case convicts on February 1.