NEW DELHI: After losing the case, Nirbhaya convicts’ lawyer, AP Singh made a controversial statement over Nirbhaya’s character, reports the Times of India.
While talking to media persons, AP Singh placed a question over Nirbhaya’s character and said that one should also ask her mother why was she out for so late and along with whom?
Singh, who has a doctorate in criminology, has been accused of exploiting loopholes in the system to save his clients from execution. Strictures have been passed against him by the Delhi High Court, while the Bar Council has issued notices over his conduct on several occasions.
But Singh continued to defend the Nirbhaya convicts — Pawan Gupta, Akshay Kumar Singh and Vinay Sharma. The fourth convict, Mukesh Kumar, had a different legal team lead by Vrinda Grover, once an amicus curiae (friend of the court) in the case.
Ajay Prakash Singh, a 46-year-old law graduate from Lucknow University, has been practising in the Supreme Court since 1997. But he shot to fame, or rather infamy, in 2012 when the Nirbhaya rape and murder case went to trial in the Saket court.
AP Singh once said it was his mother who had asked him to take up the case then. “Akshay’s wife had come from a village in Bihar to meet her arrested husband in Tihar Jail. Someone there must have passed on my number to her. She came home and met my mother. When I returned home, my mother told me, ‘you must fight to give this girl justice’,” he said.
The lawyer said he tried to reason with his mother about the consequences of taking up such a case, but she persuaded him. “My parents are simple people, extremely spiritual. They didn’t watch TV, so didn’t have much idea about the protests, Jantar Mantar, Ramlila Maidan, mombatti, dhoop batti, agar batti…” Singh said, referring to the candle-lit marches and protests in solidarity with the 23-year-old victim who was given the name ‘Nirbhaya’ or fearless by the media.
Singh’s defence of the Nirbhaya rape convicts began in the Saket court. He took up the cases of two of the convicts — Akshay and Vinay — but failed to get the duo acquitted of the grave charges. His strategy included maligning the deceased victim.
Seven years later, he does not regret his conduct.
“Should I not ask what the girl was doing with the boy so late at night? It is part of the evidence. I wasn’t saying they had a brother-sister relationship or they were out to celebrate rakhi. All I said was that they are friends. Now in their society, boyfriend-girlfriend relation must be laudable, but not in the culture I come from,” Singh said to News18.
Singh’s views had led to massive outrage in 2013. After failing to secure victory in Saket court, Singh had openly attacked the judge in the courtroom. “You have not upheld truth, but lies. This decision has been taken under political pressure and for vote-bank politics,” he had told Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna on September 13, 2013.
“If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital sex and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her on fire,” he had said.
