New Delhi: A Delhi court Monday deferred till further order the hanging of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Delhi ‘Nirbhaya’ gang rape and murder case.

The hanging of the four convicts was scheduled for Tuesday at 6 am.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana said the death sentence cannot be executed pending disposal of mercy petition of convict Pawan Kumar Gupta.

The court passed the order on Pawan’s plea seeking to stay the execution. He had filed a mercy petition before the President on Monday. The Union Home Ministry had forwarded the petition to the President for his consideration and decision. It is still with Kovind.

Pawan’s curative plea was rejected by the Supreme Court earlier in the day.

The execution of their death warrants has now been deferred thrice.

“Despite stiff resistance from the victim’s side, I am of the opinion that any condemned convict must not meet his Creator with a grievance in his bosom that the courts of the country have not acted fairly in granting him an opportunity to exhaust his legal remedies,” the judge said.

“As a cumulative effect of the discussion, I am of the opinion that the death sentence cannot be executed pending the disposal of the mercy petition of the convict. It is hereby directed that the execution of death warrants against all the convicts, scheduled for March 3 at 6 am, is deferred till further orders,” the judge added.

Also read: Nirbhaya Gangrape and Murder Case: A Timeline of Events

In the post-lunch hearing, the court pulled up Singh saying, “You are playing with fire, you should be cautious” and added “one wrong move by anybody, and you know the consequences”.

Pawan was the fourth accused in the case to file a mercy plea to the President, who had earlier rejected the petitions filed by Vinay, Mukesh and Akshay Singh Thakur.

Earlier in the day, the Delhi court had dismissed the pleas of two of the four convicts who sought a stay on the execution of their death warrants.

Akshay, in his application for the stay, had said that he has filed a fresh mercy petition before the President, which is pending. He contended that his earlier mercy petition which was dismissed by the President did not have complete facts.

The court had on February 17 ordered that the four convicts, Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31), be hanged on March 3 after it issued fresh death warrants, observing that deferring the execution any further would be “sacrilegious” to the rights of the victim for expeditious justice.

The court had noted that death warrants were earlier issued on January 7 and the execution was later deferred twice, on January 17 and January 31.

“Now deferring it any further would be sacrilegious to the rights of the victim for expeditious justice,” it had said.

The first date of execution, January 22, was postponed to February 1 by a January 17 court order. Then, the trial court on January 31, stayed, “till further orders” the execution of the four convicts as they had not exhausted all their legal remedies.

(With PTI inputs)