Delhi Bus Gang Rapist Pleads for Mercy in Execution, Claims He Was Raped in Prison

One of the four men due to be executed this week for fatally gang-raping a female student in Delhi, India, in 2012 is begging for mercy, claiming he was raped in prison.

Mukesh Singh, who is one of four convicts scheduled to be hanged on February 1 at 6 a.m., is trying to apply for a mercy plea from India’s president for a second time after the first one was rejected, NDTV reported.

Singh’s lawyers argue that President Ram Nath Kovind was not aware of all the facts surrounding the case because he did not see all the records, and called Kovind’s decision “arbitrary.”

Attorney Anjana Prakash said Kovind was not informed of Singh’s repeated sexual assaults inside the jail and his time in solitary confinement before his mercy petition was submitted, adding that this was against prison rules.

Singh, Pawan Gupta, Akshay Kumar, and Vinay Kumar Sharma are all scheduled to be executed on Saturday. All four men were initially scheduled to be hanged on January 22 before the petition to the president went forward.

The four men were responsible for gang-raping and sexually assaulting a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in South Delhi. She succumbed to her injuries and died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later.