New Delhi: Hemant Mattoo, the brother of rape-murder victim Priyadarshini Mattoo, met with Delhi Minister of Home Department Ashish Sood Wednesday at the Delhi Secretariat “to strongly urge him not to permit the release of convicted rapist and murderer Santosh Kumar Singh from Tihar jail under any circumstances”.
Priyadarshini Mattoo was a 25-year-old law student at Delhi University when Santosh Kumar Singh, the son of an IPS officer, raped and murdered her in 1996.
As the chairperson of the Sentence Review Board (SRB), Ashish Sood has the final say in the release of Santosh Kumar Singh.
His previous plea for early release “had rightly been rejected” by the SRB, a statement by Priyadarshini’s family and the founding members of the ‘Justice for Priyadarshini Mattoo’ campaign from 2006 said. The SRB must “uphold the principles of justice and public safety by denying any leniency to a man convicted of such a brutal and premeditated crime”, stressed the statement.
“We believe this is a moment of critical moral responsibility—to ensure that the integrity of the justice system is not undermined and that the voice of the victim and the collective conscience of the nation are not ignored,” the statement added further.
A letter, emphasising these points, was handed over to Sood by the family and the campaigners who helped get justice for Priyadarshini years after her rape-murder.
Back in 1995, Priyadarshini Mattoo lodged multiple complaints against Santosh Kumar Singh in the same year, accusing him of stalking her—first in February, then in August when he followed her home, and later in November when he physically assaulted her.
Santosh Kumar Singh, her college senior, had been pursuing her relentlessly in the months leading up to her death. Each time, the police excused him after he signed an undertaking, saying he would stop. He, however, did not stop. So, Priyadarshini Mattoo and her father, Chaman Lal Mattoo, reached the then police commissioner, Nikhil Kumar, for redressal.
Seeking revenge for their move against him, Santosh Kumar Singh, on 26 January 1996, committed the premeditated rape and murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo. He entered her house in the evening. Later, her body, with the cord of a room heater around her neck, was found under her bed.
A trial court in Delhi acquitted the son of the IPS officer in 1999, giving him the benefit of the doubt. The CBI, however, took the case to the Delhi High Court in February 2000, but the court then denied extending priority to the case.
Six years later, following a nationwide uproar, the Delhi HC took suo motu cognisance of the case and expedited the trial, going on to award the death penalty to Santosh Kumar Singh on 30 October 2006, in what the court recognised as the “rarest of rare cases”.
In October 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction but commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment.
On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court directed the Sentence Review Board (SRB) to reconsider the case for the premature release of Santosh Kumar Singh afresh.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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