15 years on, court convicts 5 for murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan

The court found four accused guilty of murder, while the fifth was convicted under other offences

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A court in Delhi on Wednesday, found five accused guilty in the murder of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan, who was shot dead in the national capital on September 30, 2008.

Additional Sessions Judge Ravindra Kumar Pandey found four accused guilty of murder, while the fifth was convicted under other offences, fifteen years after the murder sent shockwaves across the country.

Who was Soumya Vishwanathan?

Soumya Vishwanathan, who was 25-years-old then, was a television journalist for India Today, which was then called Headlines Today. She was the only child of Vishwanathan and Madhavi, who hailed from Kerala.

On the night of September 30, 2008, Soumya was driving home in Delhi's Vasant Kunj when she was attacked by a group of robbers at Nelson Mandela Marg.

Who are the accused?

A murder case was registered at the Vasant Vihar Police Station, and investigators initially struggled to make any headway in the probe.

The five accused persons, namely Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, Ajay Sethi, and Ajay Kumar, were arrested in March 2009.

The breakthrough in the Soumya Vishwanathan murder case came during the investigation of another similar crime. On March 19, 2009, Jigisha Ghosh, a call centre executive, was shot dead, and the investigation into the killing led the cops to Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljeet Malik. During the interrogation, the accused also admitted to the killing of Soumya Vishwanathan and two more of their accomplices, Ajay Sethi and Ajay Kumar, were arrested.

What are the charges against the accused?

On June 22, 2009, the Delhi Police filed a first charge sheet against all five accused persons under Sections 302 (murder) and 34 (Common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court had framed charges against all accused persons except Ajay Sethi for the offence of murder.

On October 8, 2009, the first supplementary charge sheet was filed by Delhi police under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against accused Ravi Kapoor.

On May 9, 2011, the court charged all of the accused persons under MCOCA for allegedly running an organised crime syndicate.

Conviction in Jigisha murder case

Malik, Kapoor and Shukla were convicted of killing Jigisha Ghosh, and two were sentenced to death in 2016.

In 2017, the Delhi High Court commuted the death sentences of Kapoor and Shukla to life imprisonment while upholding Malik's life term in Ghosh's murder case.