Soumya murder case: 4 convicts given life terms
The court found the accused guilty of murder & awarded life imprisonment to them under sections 302 & 34 of the IPC & sections under the MCOCA.
A Delhi court on Saturday sentenced four of the five convicts to two life imprisonments in the 2008 murder of 25-year-old TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan.
The court found the four accused guilty of murder and awarded life imprisonment to Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik and Ajay Kumar under sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and sections pertaining to organised crime resulting in the death of any person of the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA). It directed that the two sentences run consecutively.
The court refused to grant death penalty observing that the act does not fall within the category of “rarest of rare”.
“The Court is of the view that the present case and the act of the convicts Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Singh Malik and Ajay Kumar @ Ajay to murder the victim do not fall within the category of rare of rarest cases category in which the death penalty can be imposed,” it said. The court also imposed a fine of ₹1.25 lakh on each of the four.
READ | Soumya Vishwanathan's mother says 'enduring life imprisonment, want convicts to suffer’
The court sentenced the fifth convict, Ajay Sethi, to three years imprisonment under IPC Section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and imposed a fine of ₹7.25 lakh on him. The court set off the sentence awarded to Sethi, noting that he had already undergone more than 14 years of imprisonment in the case while the trial was going on.
It ordered that ₹12 lakh of the total fine amount imposed on the convicts be paid to the victim’s family.
Vishwanathan, who worked at Headlines Today (now India Today), was shot dead in her car on Nelson Mandela Road, in south Delhi, on her way home from the office on September 30, 2008, between 3.25am and 3.55am.
Police investigation found the motive to be robbery. As they were chasing her car in an attempt to rob her, the accused allegedly shot and killed Vishwanathan.
READ | 15 years after Soumya Vishwanathan's murder, is Delhi safer for women now?
“We have been on the case for 15 years now... I am satisfied with the verdict, but not happy. Because nothing can bring my daughter back,” the victim’s mother, Madhavi Vishwanathan, told HT after the court’s judgment.
The counsel for Shukla and Malik, advocate Amit Kumar, said the sentence was “challengeable”.
“It’s a zero-evidence case. Admittedly there was no participation in commission of murder. Before this incident, there is no criminal history, so the convictions and sentences are legally challengeable,” said Kumar, adding that the they will appeal the judgment in the Delhi high court.
The first breakthrough in Vishwanathan’s murder case came in March 2009 after police recovered the weapon used in the murder of 28-year-old BPO employee Jigisha Ghosh near her house in Vasant Vihar, in the same area where Vishwanathan was killed.
READ | How Jigisha’s parents solved murder mystery of daughter, Soumya Vishwanathan
After their arrest in relation to Ghosh’s murder, the accused — Malik, Kapoor and Shukla — disclosed their involvement in Vishwanathan’s murder in their statement to Delhi Police. Further police investigation revealed that the accused had a long record of violence and unlawful activities and were members of an organised crime syndicate led by Kapoor.
Delhi Police filed its first charge sheets under the IPC in June 2009. It filed a supplementary charge sheet in October 2009 before the court for offence under MCOCA.
In August 2016, Malik, Kapoor and Shukla were convicted in the murder of Ghosh. The court awarded the death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla, and sentenced Malik to life imprisonment. But the Delhi high court in January 2018 commuted the death sentences of the two convicts to life imprisonment, saying the circumstances of the killing could not be deemed as “rarest of the rare”, while upholding Malik’s life imprisonment.
After a trial which lasted 15 years, the court on October 18 observed that the prosecution had successfully proven through scientific evidence, testimonies of witnesses, and Kapoor’s confessional statement that he, along with Shukla, Malik and Kumar, were guilty of Vishwanathan’s murder.
It held that Kapoor, Shukla, Kumar and Malik were guilty of murder and convicted them under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), and further convicting them under section 3(1)(i) of MCOCA — conspiring to abetting, aiding in, or knowingly facilitating organised crime and receiving proceeds of organised crime.
It also held that the fifth accused, Sethi, had retained the offending vehicle and abetted or knowingly facilitated the commission of organised crime and used to hold the property derived from the proceeds of organised crime. The court thus convicted him under Section 411 of IPC and under sections 3(2) and 3(5) of MCOCA. To be sure, under MCOCA, he is sentenced to a period already undergone.
