Protesters during a protest on Nirbhaya gang rape in New Delhi. (File photo)

NEW DELHI: One of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking review of the its 2017 judgment, saying executions “kill the criminal, not the crime”.

The review petition of Akshay Kumar Singh, filed through his advocate A P Singh, strangely refers to the rising pollution levels in Delhi, saying there is no need for death sentence as life-span is itself getting shorter in the capital.

“It is important that air quality of Delhi NCR is worst and it is like a gas chamber ... The water of Delhi is also full of poison ... Life is getting shorter, then why death penalty ?” the petition said. He appealed to the court to take a lenient view and said, “Executions only kill criminal, not the crime.”

Three other convicts —Mukesh (30), Pawan Gupta (23) and Vinay Sharma (24)— had already filed review petitions in the apex court which dismissed their plea on July 9 last year. One of the convicts had committed suicide in Tihar jail while another was a juvenile at the time of the crime.

The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gang-raped by the convicts on the night of December 16, 2012 in a moving bus in south Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend. She later died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The trial court awarded death sentence to them in September 2013 and six moths later, r the Delhi High Court on March 13, 2014 upheld their conviction and sentence. Upholding the verdict of trial court and HC, the Supreme Court had said, “It is manifest that the wanton lust, the servility to absolutely unchained carnal desire and slavery to the loathsome bestiality of passion ruled the mindset of the appellants to commit a crime which can summon with immediacy tsunami of shock in the mind of the collective and destroy the civilised marrows of the milieu in entirety.”

Pleading for life and mercy, the convict in his petition said capital punishment is violative of basic human rights and requested the court to give them a chance to reform. “The state must not simply execute people to prove that it is attacking terror or violence against women. It must persistently work towards systematic reforms to bring about change,” he said.

“Why death penalty ... when age is reducing. It is mentioned in our 'Vedas', 'Puranas' and 'Upanishads' that in the age of 'Satyug' people lived for thousand years, in the age of 'Dwapar' they used to live for hundreds of years. But now it is 'Kalyug'. In this era, age of human beings has reduced much. It has now come to 50-60 years, and rarely we listen of a person who is above the age of 100 years. Very few people reach up to the age of 80-90 years ... when a person faces the stark realities of life and passes through adverse situations, he is no better that a dead body,” the petition said.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)

