According to the NDTV broadcaster, Gupta, 25, has filed a mercy petition with the Supreme Court to challenge the Delhi High Court's verdict which had dismissed his claim of being juvenile at the time of the crime last December. The curative petition will be his final chance to avoid execution by proving that tests to determine his age within the court trial were erroneous. Two of his accomplices — 32-year-old Mukesh Kumar Singh and 26-yar-old Vinay Sharma — have already exhausted this option.
The female victim, nicknamed "Nirbhaya", or "fearless", in India as the country's law protects identities of rape victims, was gang-raped and beaten by six attackers in a bus on her way back home from a movie theatre with a male friend in mid-December of 2012. She died from injuries in a hospital shortly after, triggering a powerful outrage across the nation.
The execution was postponed several times, most recently to process Mukesh Kumar's mercy petition that ended up rejected. On Thursday, the Supreme Court scheduled the execution to be held in February.