We made all preparations for hanging: Tihar authorities
New Delhi: Delhi's Tihar Prison authorities had made all necessary preparations for the hanging of four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case which was scheduled for Tuesday, officials said.
However, on Monday evening, a city court deferred the hanging till further orders.
Postponing the execution, Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana said the hanging cannot be carried out pending disposal of Pawan Gupta's mercy plea before the president, observing any condemned convict must not meet his "Creator" with grievance against courts for not acting fairly on the opportunity to exhaust legal remedies.
"We had made all the necessary arrangements for the execution of the four convicts which was scheduled for Tuesday at 6 am. Now, the execution has been postponed and we are waiting for the further order by the court," a senior jail official said.
The hanging of the four men -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan -- who are lodged in Tihar jail, was fixed for March 3 in Tihar jail on a court order.
"We had checked the ropes. Hangman was called and dummy executions were carried out," another senior jail official said.
The hangman, who was called from Meerut, will leave the national capital on Tuesday afternoon, they said. Barring Pawan, the other three had in the previous weeks moved curative petitions and mercy pleas which were all dismissed.
The first date of execution -- January 22 -- fixed on January 7 was postponed by the court to February 1. But on January 31, the court indefinitely postponed the hanging. On February 17, the court again issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 am.
The court in its orders observed that the four convicts cannot be hanged since a mercy plea of one or the other convict was pending.
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21 hours raid fetch nothing for ED, claims Karnataka Cong MLA’s son
Bengaluru (PTI): Karnataka Congress MLA N A Haris' son Mohammed Haris Nalapad on Tuesday claimed that the 21 hours of search by the ED in his house and other locations did not fetch anything.
The Enforcement Directorate on Monday raided the premises of the two sons of Haris (Mohammed Haris Nalapad and Omar Farook Nalapad), Aqeeb Khan, grandson of ex-Union cabinet minister K Rahman Khan and an alleged crypto hacker named Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki in a crypto currency-linked money laundering case.
More than a dozen premises in the city have been covered as part of the action executed under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
"My grandfather is 89-year-old. There is not a single bad mark. My father (N A Haris) is a four-time MLA. There is not a single accusation against him. Their only intention was to target myself and my brother. As simple as that," Mohammed Nalapad, who is a former Karnataka Youth Congress president, told reporters.
According to him, the ED officials carried out raids for 21 hours.
"After 21 hours of search, they took away only two mobile phones from our house. They did not get a single paisa. The ED will testify it," the Congress leader said.
Exuding faith in the law, he said he is ready to fight the case in court.
"Me and my father have opted for politics and we are in public life. You can call me whatever you want but I have not done anything wrong," Mohammed Nalapad said.
Regarding his relationship with Sriki, he said he knew him but had no clue what he was doing.
"I have never said that either me or my brother do not know Sriki. But how will I know what he does in his house? Can his crimes be linked to us," he asked.
The money laundering case stems from some Karnataka Police FIRs and chargesheets filed in a 2017 case of hacking of national and international websites, stealing of bitcoins and sale of these 'stolen' virtual digital assets (VDA) through crypto platforms by the alleged hacker Sriki and his associates.
The Nalapad brothers and Aqeeb Khan are alleged to be the beneficiaries of the proceeds of crime generated through this alleged crypto-linked crime, the ED said.
