Soumya Vishwanathan murder case: Four convicts get life sentence by Delhi court, death penalty rejected

A Delhi Court on Saturday sentenced four convicts in the murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan to life imprisonment while the fifth convict was sent to three years in jail. This came 15 years after the crime took place in the national capital.

The four accused, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, Ravi Kapoor, and Ajay Kumar have also been fined Rs 25,000 each and Rs 1 lakh each under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), India Today reported. Ajay Sethi, the fifth convict, was fined Rs 7.5 lakh.

Ordering the quantum of punishment, the court said that the act of the four convicts does not fall in the category of rarest of rare cases. So request for the death penalty is refused, it said.

Soumya, a journalist with India Today Group, was shot dead in the early hours of September 30, 2008, while she was returning home from work. Police claimed the motive was a robbery.

On October 18, the court convicted Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, and Ajay Kumar under Indian Penal Code section 302 (murder) and Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) provisions for committing organised crime resulting in the death of any person.

Ajay Sethi was convicted under IPC section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and MCOCA provisions for conspiring to abet, aid, or knowingly facilitate organised crime and receiving proceeds of organised crime.

The accused were arrested in March 2009 but the prosecution took over 13 years to present all the evidence before the court in the case. The trial began in February 2010.

According to the prosecution, Ravi Kapoor shot Vishwanathan with a country-made pistol on September 30, 2008, on Nelson Mandela Marg in South Delhi while chasing the victim's car to rob her. Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar and Baljeet Malik were also with Kapoor.

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