HC seeks presence of Jigisha's murderers

The Delhi High Court on Monday directed Tihar Jail authorities here to produce before it the two death row convicts in Jigisha Ghosh murder case on the trial court reference for confirmation of capital punishment given to them.

A division bench of Justice Gita Mittal and Justice R.K. Gauba issued production warrant to convicts Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla for September 15.

The trial court has to refer each death penalty case to a high court for confirmation of sentence within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict. On August 22, while sentencing the convicts to death, the trial court had referred the case to high court for confirmation of sentence.

The high court issued production warrants to convicts so that it can ask them if they will file an appeal against the trial court's order which convicted them and sentenced them to death.

Sentencing Kapoor and Shukla to death for kidnapping and killing Jigisha Ghosh in 2009 after convicting them and Baljit Singh Malik on July 14, the trial court had said that the magnitude and brutality of the crime made it "a rarest of rare cases". Malik was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Jigisha, 28, who was working with Hewitt Associates Pvt Ltd as an operations manager, was kidnapped and killed on March 18, 2009, after her office cab dropped her near home in south Delhi's Vasant Vihar around 4 a.m. Her body was recovered on March 20, 2009, near Surajkund in Haryana. Police later arrested Kapoor, Shukla and Malik for the crime.

--IANS

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