The Delhi High Court Monday dismissed the plea of two of the four accused in the Dec 16, 2012 gang-rape case, seeking Hindi translation of certain documents including the conviction and sentence orders.
A division bench of Justice Reva Khetrapal and Justice Pratibha Rani rejected the plea saying the language of the courts here is English and a translated version is provided only in cases where court proceedings are recorded in a different language.
It observed that the plea was filed to “delay” the hearing of the appeal.
At one instance, the court said: “If you go on trying to delay the case, the court will have the feeling that you don’t have any case.”
Accepting the arguments of the Special Public Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan, that all the accused in the case have been provided with a translated copy during the trial at the lower court, the bench posted the matter for Nov 1.
It said: “It seems that this application is only a methodology adopted to protract the hearing of the appeal. No effort have been made to remove objections in the appeal, although ample time is granted to file the appeal.”
During the hearing, the bench also asked counsel M.L. Sharma, appearing for Mukesh and Pawan Gupta, who were among the four accused who were convicted by the trial court and received the death sentence, that “if you go on like this, feeling will come in the mind of court that you want to delay the case. You want this feeling to come in court’s mind?”
“If you do not want to delay the appeal why don’t you get the documents translated? If you want justice, you argue on the case,” the bench said.
The court’s remark came after Sharma said that it is the court’s duty to direct the prosecution to supply the Hindi translated copy of judgments.
The bench was hearing the trial court’s reference for confirming the death sentence to four convicts in the Dec 16 gang-rape case.
The lawyer had moved the application seeking the Hindi version of the First Information Report, the charge sheet, evidence, the Sep 10 conviction judgment and the Sep 13 sentence order.
The trial court Sep 13 awarded the death sentence to Mukesh, 26, Akshay Thakur, 28, Pawan Gupta, 19, and Vinay Sharma, 20, convicted in the case, and referred the case to the high court for confirmation of their sentence.
Awarding death penalty to the four, the court has said that their “hair-rising beastly and unparalleled behaviour” definitely qualified this as one of the “rarest of rare cases” that deserved the death sentence.
A 23-year-old student of physiotherapy was brutally gang-raped in a moving bus by six people, including a juvenile. The accused then threw her and her male companion out of the vehicle, stripped of clothing, to die by the roadside on the cold December night.
The woman died of grave intestinal injuries Dec 29 at Singapore’s Mount Elizabeth Hospital where she was airlifted for specialised treatment.
One of the six accused was found dead in a cell in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. A juvenile involved in the crime was, Aug 31, sent by the Juvenile Justice Board to a reform home for three years, the maximum term under the juvenile law.
(Source:Indo-Asian New Service)
