The apex court had on May 5, 2017 upheld the verdict of the Delhi high court and the trial court awarding capital punishment to four convicts - Mukesh, 29, Pawan Gupta, 22, Vinay Sharma, 23, and Akshay Kumar Singh, 31, -- in the sensational December 2012 case that related to gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student in Delhi.
According to the complaint filed by the victim's family, she had left her house to use the toilet on Wednesday night. The two accused policemen reportedly dragged her to a car and raped her.
Sunanda's mail and messages on social media should be taken as a "dying declaration", the police told the court, which reserved for June 5 its order on whether to summon Tharoor as an accused in the case.
Following is the chronology of events in the keenly watched trial of the December 16 gang rape and murder case of a 23-year-old girl in which a Delhi court on Friday awarded death penalty to the four convicts:
The Rajiv Gandhi assassination, investigation and trial were all jinxed in parts, recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Centre and the Delhi government challenged the trial court's January 31 order staying 'till further orders' the execution of all the four convicts in the case. The parents of the victim urged the court to expeditiously decide the Centre's plea and were assured by the judge that the order would be passed at the earliest.
'How can the police say that she alone has committed the crime and no other person has done it?'
Mehta told Justice Suresh Kait that convict Pawan Gupta's move of not filing a curative or a mercy petition is a deliberate, calculated inaction.
Ehsanullah Ehsan said that he will release a detailed statement later in which he will mention the agreement he made with the Pakistani security authorities.
Amid a raging row, two police officers were on Friday booked on charges of murder of a 15-year-old Dalit youth in Sonipat even as Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar claimed that he had committed suicide and had not died in police custody as alleged by his family.
'One police officer told me that trials take forever, conviction rates are low.' 'So one way to judge states' performance on handling crime is through the 'recovery rate' of their police.' 'The fastest way to get recovery is by torturing the accused.'
Gupta, against whom the death warrant has been issued for execution along with three other condemned prisoners on March 3, has filed the curative plea saying that the death penalty should not awarded to him, his counsel A P Singh said.
Ganapathy was found dead at Madikeri in Karnataka on July 7 last year.
A 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a running bus in south Delhi by six persons and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road.
Two minor girls, both cousins, were allegedly kidnapped and gang-raped at gun point by five persons in Jareef Nagar area in Badaun, almost a year after a similar incident in the district had stirred Uttar Pradesh and opposition had attacked the government over law and order.
"I am not pained at the fact that execution has been postponed but I am pained at the fact that the lawyer of the convicts A P Singh has challenged me saying that the convicts will never be executed, this is the most painful thing," said Asha Devi.
As the 35-year-old IAS officer D K Ravi's death rocked the Assembly with public pressure also building up for a CBI probe, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said the Crime Investigation Department would probe the case to unravel the "truth" -- whether it was a suicide or murder or due to "some other" reasons.
Singh had moved the mercy plea after the Supreme Court dismissed his curative petition against his conviction and death sentence. The apex court had also rejected the curative petition of another death row convict Akshay Kumar, 31.
Al Qaeda's reclusive chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who played a central role in the 9/11 terror attacks and later created the group's regional affiliate in the Indian subcontinent, was killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan's Kabul, in the biggest blow to the global terror network since killing of its founder Osama bin Laden in 2011 in Pakistan.
A Metropolitan Magistrate court in Mumbai extended the judicial custody of Indrani Mukerjea -- prime accused in the Sheena Bora murder case -- and two others till November 20 after their week-long remand ended on Saturday.
"The next 48 hours will be critical for her," J J Hospital Dean Dr T P Lahane told reporters on Saturday when asked if she is out of danger.
The Supreme Court is likely to hear on Monday the plea of Mukesh, who has also sought quashing of all orders passed by courts and the rejection of his mercy petition by the President since the day his curative petition was dismissed by the apex court.
Here are the latest updates in the Indrani case after she was rushed to hospital after an alleged over dose in prison
Hours after the clemency plea of Vinay Kumar Sharma, 26, was dismissed by the President, Akshay Thakur, 31, a third death row convict, filed a mercy petition.
The Centre said the remission of sentence will have "international ramifications".
Jail officials said that after the death warrants were issued, the convicts were asked when they would like to meet their respective families for the last time, but none of them has responded yet. They are scheduled to be hanged on February 1.
The former police chief also said that the Home Minister had on several occasions instructed police officers on how to handle cases and file charges.
'Afzal Guru was convicted of supporting the attack on India's Parliament. The Supreme Court said "the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded" to Guru.' 'Till we can think up similar justifications for hanging non-Muslims, I do not think we can delink terrorism from religion in our minds,' argues Aakar Patel.
Three fresh cases have been registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with multi-crore rupee Vyapam scam.
'These are people who are anxious to die.' 'We have not seen such type of committed people anywhere.'
What is perhaps more worrisome is that while the conviction rate in rape cases has increased marginally in recent years, the chargesheeting rate has gone down -- which means cases are not going to court.
The Kerala high court on Thursday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct further investigation into the murder of Sister Abhaya in 1992 in Kottayam, in respect of certain material objects omitted earlier and to file report in three months.
Sonia, Rahul and former prime minister Manmohan Singh gave fiery speeches attacking the Modi-led government.
A 3-judge bench headed by Justice R Banumathi said there are no grounds to review the verdict
'It is not the chief minister who would have rung up and told the local police station to botch up the case.' 'No chief minister or chief secretary or DGP would like a case like this happening in their state.'
An innocent Canadian Sikh journalist was wrongly accused of being involved in the Paris attacks after his photo-shopped image went viral on social media and a Spanish newspaper printed the snap identifying him as a terrorist.
The Bombay High Court on Thursday handed over to CBI the probe into Bollywood actress Jiah Khan's death, five months after Mumbai police concluded it was a case of suicide and charged her live-in partner Suraj Pancholi with abetting it.
'...the CBI, just to force people to implicate me and the CM, has beaten up dozens of people,' Kumar alleged.
The Centre has put the blame on state governments while state governments complain that money is not released for the proposals given by them to the Empowered Committee that has been tasked with recommending proposals to be funded under this framework.
The four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case spent a restless and sleepless night. They were asked to take a bath but none of them did. All of them were served their last meal but one of them refused breakfast before being taken to the gallows, an official said.
