Akshay Singh, one of the convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya rape-murder case on Tuesday moved a review petition in the Supreme Court against the death penalty awarded to him. The same has been filed and accepted by the apex court registry.

A lawyer for the convicts has been quoted as saying that the other three will file a curative petition together but only after the disposal of Singh’s review petition. The court has already rejected similar review petitions from Vinay Kumar, Mukesh Singh and Pawan Gupta.

These developments come amidst reports that now all the convicts are in the Delhi’s Tihar jail and that the central prison in Buxar has been asked to make ten pieces of a special rope that is believed to be used for execution by hanging.

The last person to be sent to the gallows in Tihar was Afzal Guru. The convict in the 2001 Parliament attack was hanged in 2013.

Last week, the Delhi government and the centre rejected the mercy request of one of the convicts — Vinay Kumar — and sent it back urging President Ram Nath Kovind to turn it down too, clearing the way for the execution of the four convicts.

Reportedly, the government is struggling to find hangman for the execution of the convicts. After the news broke out that no hangman was available, many persons have proposed to act as hangman saying that they were happily willing to execute as the crime the convicts have committed is ghastly and doesn’t need leniency.

One such man is Dalit activist Ravi Kumar from Himachal Pradesh who has written to President Ram Nath Kovind to appoint him as temporary executioner. Another man is S Subash Srinivasan, a forty-two year old head constable who has also volunteered to hang Nirbhaya killers.

—India Legal Bureau