The Supreme Court on Friday refused to clear the execution of the four convicts in the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape-and-murder of a paramedical student after noting that Delhi High Court had given seven days to them to exhaust all their legal remedies.

“…Let the one-week time be over. Maybe all options will be exhausted by then. We’ll consider then,” the Supreme Court bench of Justices R. Banumathi, Ashok Bhushan and A.S. Bopanna told solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Centre.

The bench adjourned the hearing to 2pm on February 11, by when it hoped the convicts would have exhausted all their legal remedies.

The court said it would hear the Centre’s appeal for separate hangings of the convicts on that day itself.

The Centre and the Delhi government had challenged the Delhi High Court judgment on Wednesday rejecting its plea for vacating the stay imposed by a trial court on the execution of the four death-row convicts.

The trial court had on January 31 stayed “till further orders” the execution of the four convicts — Mukesh Kumar Singh, 32, Pawan Gupta, 25, Vinay Kumar

Sharma, 26, and Akshay Kumar, 31 — who are lodged in Tihar jail. Additional sessions judge Dharmendra Rana on Friday dismissed Tihar jail authorities’ plea seeking a fresh date for the executions.