Soumya Vishwanathan’s murder convict approached the Delhi High Court on Thursday, challenging his conviction and life sentence. He was convicted by a Delhi court under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) in November last year.
In his plea, the convict stated that the trial court had delivered the verdict in the blind and clueless murder case under acute media and social pressure. He alleged that the Delhi Police had falsely charged him. He further stated the trial court had committed a grave error by convicting and sentencing the accused on the basis of surmises and conjectures under the various provisions of penal law for their similar alleged acts.
The convict said the trial court had further failed to acknowledge that the prosecution had miserably failed to link the accused in commission of the alleged offence, mentioning that there was no recovery of murder weapon or vehicle from the accused.
Notably on November 25, 2023, Delhi’s Saket court sentenced four convicts in the murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan to life imprisonment, almost 15 years after the crime took place in Delhi. The fifth convict has been sentenced to the period already undergone by him in jail.
All the four accused namely Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Balbir Malik, Ajay Kumar had also been fined Rs 25,000 each and Rs 1 lakh each under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). Reportedly, the fifth convict, Ajay Sethi, was fined Rs 7.5 lakh.
The court had also ordered that Rs 1.2 lakh from the fine imposed on the four convicts be given to the parents of Soumya Vishwanathan. The court ruled that the act of the four convicts does not fall under the rarest of rare category and hence, the death penalty cannot be imposed.
Soumya, a 25-year-old journalist with India Today Group, was shot dead in the early hours of September 30, 2008, on south Delhi’s Nelson Mandela Marg while she was returning home from work. Police claimed the motive behind the murder was robbery.