Forty hours before they were to be taken to the gallows, the four Delhi gang rape convicts on Thursday rushed to a Delhi court to ask the judge to stop execution of their 1 February death warrant. In an application filed in the court, their lawyer AP Singh told the judge that a mercy plea filed by 26-year-old Vinay Kumar Sharma to seek a presidential pardon was still pending, according to news agency PTI.

Vinay Kumar Sharma had filed the mercy plea on Wednesday evening.

Lawyer AP Singh cited provisions of the Delhi Prison Rules that make it clear that none of the four convicts in the same crime can be hanged before the last one has exhausted all legal options including the mercy petition.

Besides, Singh has also drawn the court’s attention to the 2014 verdict of the Supreme Court that ordered jail authorities to give death row convicts 14 days after rejection of their mercy plea before hanging them.