New Delhi: A court here has convicted four accused namely Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar and Baljeet Malik for the 2008 murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan.
While the fifth accused in the case, Ajay Sethi, was convicted by Delhi’s Saket court for the offence of receiving stolen property, all five accused — including Sethi — have been convicted under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
“We are seeking lifetime imprisonment for the accused. The death penalty will be easy for them. We want them to suffer like the way we are suffering,” Soumya’s mother Madhavi Vishwanathan told ThePrint Wednesday, after the court announced its verdict.
Vishwanathan, the 25-year-old scribe with Headlines Today (now India Today) was killed in the early hours of 30 September, 2008, on Vasant Vihar’s Nelson Mandela Road in what the police claimed was a case of armed robbery.
Soumya’s mother said Wednesday that the verdict would certainly act as a deterrent for such gangs. “Otherwise, they would have been emboldened further… At least one section of the gang will be out of it,” she told the media.
All accused convicted in 2008 Delhi journalist Saumya Vishwanathan murder case
On the verdict, the deceased journalist's mother says, "We've lost our daughter but this (verdict) will act as a deterrent for others also."
"Life imprisonment," she adds on what should be the… pic.twitter.com/pRSjk7mxUX
— ANI (@ANI) October 18, 2023
The police made a breakthrough in Vishwanathan’s case nearly six months after her murder, when the body of techie Jigisha Ghosh was recovered from Faridabad on 21 March, 2009. A probe into Ghosh’s murder led police to the five accused, one of whom subsequently confessed to involvement in Vishwanathan’s murder.
Cops soon arrested Kapoor, Shukla, and Malik in connection with Vishwanathan’s murder.
During interrogation, Malik revealed the names of the other two, leading to the arrests of Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi.
“This is a zero-evidence case and based on popular public opinion. This conviction order is based on a media trial. We are eager to see on what evidence court has convicted these accused. We will challenge this conviction order in Delhi High Court after sentencing is announced,” said Amit Kumar, the lawyer representing Baljeet Malik and Amit Shukla, to The Print.
He added that the prosecution case is based on a sequence of events such as Ravi Kapoor driving while Amit Shukla was sitting in the co-pilot seat. The other two accused convicted in the case Ajay Kumar and Baljeet were sitting in the back seat.
In 2017, a trial court sentenced Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla to death, and handed down a life sentence to Baljeet Malik in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case.
The Delhi High Court had commuted the death sentences of Kapoor and Shukla in 2018.