The Supreme Court today said that it would hear on 5th of March the plea filed by the Centre challenging the Delhi High Court verdict which held that the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya case have to be executed together and not separately.

The apex court had made it clear on 14th of February that pendency of the Centre’s appeal seeking separate execution of the four convicts would not come in the way of trial court’s issuing a fresh date for their hanging, which is now scheduled for 3rd of March.

The appeal filed by the Centre and the Delhi Government came up for hearing before a bench of Justices R Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and Navin Sinha which adjourned the matter for next week.

The high court dismissed the Centre’s plea against the trial court’s order on 5th of February staying the execution of death sentence of the four convicts. It also faulted the authorities concerned for not taking steps for issuance of death warrant after the rejection of appeals of the accused by the Supreme Court in 2017.

Earlier, the trial court on 17th of February issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for 3rd of March at 6 a.m. for the four convicts –  Mukesh Kumar Singh Pawan Gupta, Vinay Kumar Sharma and Akshay Kumar– in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.