New Delhi [India], July 8 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice on a plea filed by Delhi police against the Delhi High Court order granting bail to four convicts serving life imprisonment in the 2008 television journalist Soumya Vishwanathan murder case.
A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma tagged the pleas of Delhi Police with the pending petition filed by Soumya Vishwanathan’s mother against bail granted to four convicts.
In April 2024, the apex court had issued notice to four convicts on a plea filed by Vishwanathan’s mother challenging the bail granted to them by the Delhi High Court.
The Delhi High Court on February 12 suspended convicts’ sentences and granted bail to convicts till the pendency of their appeal challenging their conviction and sentence.
The convicts are Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Singh Malik, and Ajay Kumar, out of whom Kapoor, Shukla and Malik were also convicted in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case.
Vishwanathan, who worked with an English news channel, was shot dead in the early hours of September 30, 2008, on Nelson Mandela Marg in south Delhi while she was returning home from work in her car.
Last year, a special court awarded double life terms to Kapoor, Shukla, Malik and Kumar under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 3(1)(i) (committing organised crime resulting in the death of any person) of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
The court had made it clear that the sentences would run “consecutively.”
Challenging the trial court order of their conviction and sentence of life imprisonment, the convicts moved to the Delhi High Court. They had also filed applications seeking suspension of sentences during the pendency of the appeal.
The High Court, while granting relief to the convicts, noted that they have been in custody for 14 years.
Highlighting the two life terms awarded to the convicts, the journalist’s mother had sought the top court’s intervention.
As per the prosecution, Kapoor shot Vishwanathan with a country-made pistol while chasing her car to rob her. Shukla, Kumar, and Malik were accompanying him.
The trial court had also awarded the death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla and sentenced Malik to life imprisonment in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case. However, Kapoor’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the High Court, which upheld Malik’s life sentence. (ANI)
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