Akshay Kumar Singh v. State (NCT of Delhi)
Background
The petitioner, Akshay Kumar Singh, was the bus helper convicted and sentenced to death (along with co-accused) for the gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012. His conviction and death sentence had been confirmed by the Supreme Court in its 5 May 2017 judgment in Mukesh v. State (NCT of Delhi). He filed this review petition seeking to reopen that judgment, raising grounds including alleged flaws in investigation and dying-declaration evidence, his plea of alibi, challenges to DNA and bite-mark evidence, arguments against capital punishment generally, and even arguments about pollution levels in Delhi making the death penalty unnecessary.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court reiterated that review jurisdiction in criminal matters under Article 137 and the Supreme Court Rules is extremely narrow, limited only to an "error apparent on the face of the record", and is not a re-hearing or re-appreciation of evidence. The Court found that nearly all the grounds raised were identical to those already considered and rejected in the co-accused's earlier review petitions (Mukesh v. State and Vinay Sharma v. State, both 2018). It went through each specific ground, dying declarations, the alibi defence, DNA/bite-mark evidence, CCTV footage, bus identification, and the "rarest of rare" finding justifying death penalty, and found no error apparent on the face of the record in any of them, expressly noting some grounds (such as the "Kalyug"/pollution argument) were without merit. The review petition was accordingly dismissed, and the death sentence stood confirmed.
Lesson Learnt
A review petition is not a second appeal: it cannot be used to re-argue the merits of a case or re-litigate evidence already considered; it succeeds only where there is a glaring, demonstrable error on the face of the record, and repeating the same arguments already rejected for co-accused will not succeed.