New Delhi, Mar 11 (PTI) The Delhi High Court on Monday pulled up convict Ravi Kapoor, serving life sentence for the murder of IT executive Jigisha Ghosh, for filing two similar pleas seeking parole to attend his niece’s wedding.
Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta dismissed the two petitions of Kapoor and observed that it was a total misuse of the process of law and he deserves imposition of heavy costs.
The court, however, took a lenient view and did not impose costs on the petitioner.
“The tactics adopted by the petitioner (Kapoor) appeared to be overreaching the majesty of the court since neither the earlier petition was withdrawn by him nor filing of the previous petition was mentioned in the fresh plea,” the high court said.
Initially, Kapoor approached the high court seeking three months’ parole for attending his niece’s wedding in March and for maintaining social ties with his parents and other family members and the high court had issued notice to the state on March 4 to respond to the plea.
During pendency of the plea, Kapoor filed another petition seeking the same relief.
While the counsel representing Kapoor claimed that she had to file the second petition since there was a typographical error in the name of the police station concerned in the previous plea and added that she has also filed an application to withdraw the first petition.
The counsel for the state, however, contended that the second petition mentions “the petitioner has not filed any similar petition before this court or the Supreme Court”.
The high court noted that the application seeking to withdraw the first petition is stated to have been filed but it does not appear to have been listed before the court.
The court said since it had made certain observations on the number of pending cases against Kapoor in the last hearing, this could have prompted him to file another petition.
Kapoor, who was convicted for killing journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and IT executive Jigisha Ghosh, was recently granted bail by the high court in Soumya’s case during the pendency of his appeal challenging his conviction and sentence.
The high court had in January denied him parole considering the gravity of the offences committed by him.
He was awarded death penalty by a trial court in 2016 in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case and it was later commuted to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court. He was also convicted in the case of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan’s murder in 2008. The trial court convicted and sentenced him to a life term in 2023.
Jigisha, 28, who was working in an IT firm, was kidnapped and killed in the early morning of March 18, 2009, after her office cab dropped her near her home in South Delhi’s Vasant Vihar at around 4 am. Her body was recovered two days later from Surajkund in Haryana. Police later arrested three men and they were held guilty by the court.
Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha’s killing had led to cracking of the Soumya Vishwanathan murder case. Vishwanathan, a journalist with a news channel, was shot dead on September 30, 2008, while she was returning home from office in the early hours.
The police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killings of both Jigisha and Soumya. PTI SKV SMN
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