The Saket Court in Delhi today convicted all five accused in the 2008 murder of Delhi journalist Soumya Vishwanathan. The verdict came after over fifteen years since the crime that took place in the national capital.
The court today convicted all the five accused namely Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar, Baljeet Malik, and Ajay Sethi.
About Vishwanathan's death
Back in September 30, 2008, Vishwanathan was shot dead on her way back to home from work in her car around 3:30 am. According to police, the motive behind her killing was robbery.
Police apprehended five men- Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi- for killing her and are in custody since March 2009.
Police had invoked the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the accused.
The recovery of the weapon used in IT executive Jigisha Ghosh's killing had led to the cracking of Vishwanathan's murder case, police said.
Legal proceeding so far
After Baljeet Malik, one of the accused, moved a plea in the Delhi High Court in 2019 for a speedy trial, it sought a report from the trial court as to why the trial had not concluded nine-and-a-half years after the chargesheet was filed.
The trial court had informed the high court that the delay was primarily due to the non-presence of prosecution witnesses and the time taken for the appointment of a special public prosecutor.
The trial court had given death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla and sentenced Malik to a life term in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case in August 2016.
In January 2018, however, the high court had commuted the death sentence of Kapoor and Shukla to life imprisonment and upheld the life term of Malik.
