New Delhi: Madhavi Vishwanathan believes the noose is “too easy” for the men convicted for the murder of her daughter. “I am not in favour of the death penalty because that’s too easy. They should suffer what we are suffering. We are suffering for life, they should also suffer for… life,” she told the crowd of reporters assembled in the Saket court complex.
Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar, Baljeet Malik and Ravi Kapoor were convicted for the 2008 murder of television journalist Soumya Vishwanathan.
Madhavi, however, said that this verdict will go on to deter other criminals.
Her husband M.K. Vishwanathan said that justice has been delivered in this case.
The conviction order was read out by Additional Sessions Judge Ravindra Kumar Pandey in the presence of all the accused and the parents of Soumya Vishwanathan. The judge said that the arguments for the quantum of sentence would take place on 26 October.
Soumya, a journalist with Headlines Today (now India Today), was returning home from office when she was murdered around 3:30 AM on 30 September, 2008, on the Nelson Mandela Marg in the national capital.
On Wednesday, the judge convicted Shukla, Kumar, Malik, Kapoor and Ajay Sethi, the fifth accused in the case, under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
While the first four were convicted under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC, Sethi was not charged with murder and was convicted under section 411 of the Indian Penal Code for knowingly retaining the vehicle which was the proceeds of crime and was used in the crime to kill Soumya Vishwanathan.
All the accused were convicted under relevant sections as the prosecution could prove “beyond reasonable doubt” of their involvement in the crime, the judge said.
Special Commissioner of Police H.G.S Dhaliwal also reached the Saket Court after the conviction order and met the Vishwanathan family.
In his address to the press, Dhaliwal, who was Deputy Commissioner of Police, South District, in 2008, said that this was one of the rare cases in which the killers did not come out of the car and rather shot from the moving car.
He added that there were words for the transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) but in a rare decision, the family decided to keep the investigation with the Delhi Police.
‘Media trial, up for challenge’
Advocate Amit Kumar, who represented Shukla and Malik, told ThePrint that he was waiting to go through a copy of the judgement for finding out the evidence based on which the judge convicted all the accused.
Kumar claimed that the conviction was based on public opinion and that he would challenge it in the Delhi High Court after the quantum of the sentence was announced.
“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 what evidence the court has seen to convict these accused. We will challenge this conviction order in Delhi High Court after sentencing is announced,” he told ThePrint.
The advocate claimed that the prosecution’s case is based on a sequence of events in which Kapoor was driving the car while Amit Shukla was sitting on the co-pilot seat. The other two accused, Kumar and Baljeet, were sitting in the back seat, he added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)