The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the plea of Pawan Gupta, a convict in the 2012 Delhi gangrape and murder case, seeking a review of the top court’s decision to dismiss his claim that he was a juvenile at the time of the crime, PTI reported.

On January 20, the Supreme Court had dismissed Gupta’s claim that he was a juvenile when he, along with five others, raped a 23-year-old woman on a bus in Delhi in 2012. Earlier, the Delhi High Court had rejected his claim too and fined his lawyer AP Singh Rs 25,000 for wasting its time.

The review plea was heard in-chamber by Justices Ashok Bhushan, R Banumathi, and AS Bopanna.

Multiple petitions have been filed by the four death-row convicts in their attempts to stall their execution, which is scheduled for 6 am on February 1.

The parents of the woman who was raped have said that the four men should be hanged on Saturday, and should not be allowed to exploit the law to delay the process, reported NDTV. A court had earlier scheduled the execution of the four convicts in the case for January 22, but one convict, Mukesh Singh, filed a mercy plea before President Ram Nath Kovind. Kovind rejected the mercy petition, but due to the delay, new death warrants had to be issued.

The case

Six men raped and brutally assaulted a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in Delhi on the night of December 16, 2012. The woman succumbed to her injuries two weeks later at a hospital in Singapore. The gangrape triggered huge protests in the Capital and across the country. One convict died in prison, while a minor convict was sent to a detention home for juveniles and was released in December 2015.

The four other convicts were given the death penalty – first by a trial court in September 2013, which was upheld by the Delhi High Court six months later and the Supreme Court in May 2017. The top court rejected review petitions filed by three of them in 2018, and of the fourth convict last month.