Vinay Sharma is one of the four convicts in the Dec 16 Delhi gang rape case. (HT File )

President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday rejected the mercy petition of Vinay Sharma, one of the four death row convicts in the December 2012 gang-rape and murder case.

Vinay Sharma had filed his mercy petition before President on Wednesday urging him to listen to his side of the story “when nobody did”, his lawyer said.

AP Singh, who represents Vinay Sharma, had said the death row convict has stated that he feels that he has “died several times already” in prison during the pendency of judicial proceedings.

The Supreme Court has already rejected the curative petition of Vinay.

On Friday, a Delhi court had deferred the hanging of the four convicts—Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh—until further orders.

The court was hearing a plea filed by Vinay Sharma, who had sought that the death warrant issued by the court on January 17, for the second time, be stayed in the wake of the mercy petition pending before the President.

The court had said that the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018, say that if an appeal and application is made by one convict then the execution sentence of all co-convicts will be postponed as well.

“...I am of the considered opinion that the execution warrant issued by this court vide order dated January 17 deserves to be postponed till further orders,” additional sessions judge Dharmendra Rana said.

The court also said that according to the Delhi Prison Rules (DPR), 2018, the execution sentence of all convicts of the case will be postponed pending receipt of orders from the President of India.

The trial court had issued black warrants for all the four convicts on January 17 and decreed that they were to be hanged at Tihar jail at 6am on February 1.

They were convicted of raping the 23-year-old woman on the night of December 16, 2012, in a moving bus in south Delhi. She died of injuries a fortnight later at a Singapore hospital.

They were sentenced to death by a fast-track court within a year of the brutal crime that had brought thousands of people to the streets in demand of better safety for women and stricter laws.

The protests eventually led to a major overhaul of all laws surrounding sexual assault.