New Delhi, October 18
Holding that charges against them had been “duly proved beyond all reasonable doubt”, a Delhi court on Wednesday convicted four men of the murder of television journalist Soumya Vishwanathan who was shot during a robbery attempt here in 2008.
Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Ravindra Kumar Pandey convicted Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik and Ajay Kumar under Section 302 (murder) and Section 34 (common intention) of the IPC and some provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. The offences attract the death penalty as the maximum sentence. ASJ Pandey also convicted fifth accused Ajay Sethi under Section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), IPC, and MCOCA for conspiring to abet, aid or knowingly facilitate organised crime and for receiving the proceeds of organised crime.
The five accused have been in custody since March 2009.
The court would hear arguments on quantum sentence to be awarded to the convicts on October 26. Soumya’s mother Madhavi Viswanathan demanded life imprisonment for the four convicts, saying they should suffer what her family went through.
Soumya, a journalist with a leading English news channel, was shot dead in the wee hours of September 30 on Nelson Mandela Marg in Delhi when she was returning home from work. The police had alleged that the motive behind the killing was robbery. The recovery of the weapon used in IT executive Jigisha Ghosh’s killing had led to cracking the case, the police said.
After examining testimonies of 97 prosecution witnesses in his 261-page judgment, ASJ Pandey pronounced, “The court is of the view that prosecution has duly proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Ravi Kapoor and his other associates had murdered Saumya with the intention to rob her on September 30, 2008, between 3.25 am and 3.55 am at Nelson Mandela Marg.” (With inputs from PTI)
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