Lost daughter, but do not want death penalty, say Soumya Vishwanathan’s parents

Madhavi Vishwanathan said she wants the convicts to get life imprisonment so they can suffer like the parents of the murdered Delhi journalist have suffered

As additional sessions judge Ravindra Kumar Pandey read out a Delhi trial court’s finding, convicting the five men charged with television journalist Soumya Vishwanathan’s murder 15 years ago, her mother Madhavi Vishwanathan buried her head in her hands.

Soumya Vishwanathan’s parents Madhavi and MK Vishwanathan on Wednesday. (PTI)

“We have been fighting for 15 years... It’s a relief but we have lost our daughter,” she told HT.

On September 30, 2008, Vishwanathan was shot dead in her car at Vasant Kunj around 3.30am, while she was returning home from work.

On Wednesday, judge Pandey held that four of the accused —Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar, and Baljeet Malik — had committed the murder with intention to rob her and thus convicted them under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention). They are also held guilty under section 3(1)(i) of the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). The court also convicted a fifth suspect, Ajay Sethi, on charges of receiving stolen property.

The judge has fixed October 26 for sentencing.

After the verdict, Madhavi Vishwanathan said she and her family do not want the court to hand down the death penalty to the accused.

She said she had “butterflies in her stomach” while she was in the courtroom. “We are not in favour of the death penalty. We want them to suffer like we are suffering,” she said, adding that the punishment they are hoping for is life imprisonment.

MK Vishwanathan, the deceased’s father, said he had a feeling that the verdict would be in their favour. However, he added, “There’s no happiness... I will never get my daughter back.”

After Vishwanathan’s murder came to light, investigators struggled for any development in the case. The breakthrough came six months later, during a probe into the murder of IT executive Jigisha Ghosh’s killers. The Delhi Police then declared that the same men were involved in Vishwanathan’s murder as well.