Congress will construct Ram Path if comes to power in MP: Digvijaya Singh

New Delhi, Mar 3: Delhi's Tihar Prison authorities had made all necessary preparations for the hanging of four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case which was scheduled for Tuesday, officials said Monday.

However, on Monday evening, a city court deferred the hanging till further orders.

Postponing the execution, Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana said the hanging cannot be carried out pending disposal of Pawan Gupta's mercy plea before the President, observing any condemned convict must not meet his "Creator" with grievance against courts for not acting fairly on the opportunity to exhaust legal remedies.

"We had made all the necessary arrangements for the execution of the four convicts which was scheduled for Tuesday at 6 AM. Now, the execution has been postponed and we are waiting for the further order by the court," a senior jail official said.

The hanging of the four men -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan -- who are lodged in Tihar jail, was fixed for March 3 in Tihar jail on a court order.

"We had checked the ropes. Hangman was called and dummy executions were carried out," another senior jail official said.

Barring Pawan, the other three had in the previous weeks moved curative petitions and mercy pleas which were all dismissed.

The first date of execution -- January 22 -- fixed on January 7 was postponed by the court to February 1. But on January 31, the court indefinitely postponed the hanging. On February 17, the court again issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 AM.

The court in its orders observed that the four convicts cannot be hanged since a mercy plea of one or the other convict was pending.

New Delhi, Jun 11: Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday said the religious and constitutional rights of minorities are absolutely safe in India and it does not need any certificate from anyone as communal harmony and tolerance are in the DNA of the country and its majority community.

Comments of Rijiju, a Buddhist, came after a top Trump administration official has said that the US is very concerned about what is happening in India in terms of religious freedom.

"India doesn't need certificate on communal harmony and tolerance which is in the DNA of India and the majority community in India," Rijiju, who holds the charge of the Union minister of state for minority affairs besides being the union sports minister, said in a statement.

Rijiju said the social, religious and constitutional rights of minorities are absolutely safe in the country.

"A few politically intolerant people are trying to create an atmosphere of fear and intolerance. As a member of the minority community, I feel India is the best country in the world for the minorities," he said.

Samuel Brownback, the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, said on Wednesday that India has been a country area that spawned four major religions itself.

"We do remain very concerned about what's taking place in India. It's historically just been a very tolerant, respectful country of religions, of all religions," he said.

The trendlines have been troubling in India because it is such a religious subcontinent and seeing a lot more communal violence, Brownback said.

His comments came after the release of the '2019 International Religious Freedom Report'.

Mandated by the US Congress, the report documenting major instances of the violation of religious freedom across the world was released by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the State Department.

India has previously rejected the US religious freedom report, saying it sees no locus standi for a foreign government to pronounce on the state of its citizens' constitutionally protected rights.

"India is proud of its secular credentials, its status as the largest democracy and a pluralistic society with a longstanding commitment to tolerance and inclusion", the government had said earlier.