Four convicts in Soumya murder case granted bail by Delhi HC

Delhi High Court grants bail to four convicts in the murder case of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan after 14 years in custody.

The Delhi High Court on Monday granted bail to four convicts serving life imprisonment for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan.

Noting that the men — Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik and Ajay Kumar — had been in custody for 14 years, the court suspended their sentence till the pendency of their appeals challenging their conviction.

Vishwanathan was shot dead in the early hours of September 30, 2008 while she was returning home from office on Nelson Mandela Marg. The police had said that Vishwanathan, then 28, was murdered during a robbery bid as some of her belongings were found missing from the scene of the crime.

A special court here had on November 26, 2023 awarded life imprisonment to the four men and three years in jail to another for receiving the stolen belongings.

While ordering the quantum of punishment, the special court had said that the offence does not fall in the category of ‘rarest of rare cases’ and denied the request for death penalty to the accused.

During its investigation into the murder of Jigisha Ghosh, a BPO employee, the police had in March 2009 interrogated three accused, one of whom among them later confessed to having been involved in the murder of Vishwanathan as well.

soumyaA trial court had awarded the death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla and sentenced Malik to life term in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case in August 2016. In January 2018, the High Court commuted the death sentence of Kapoor and Shukla to life imprisonment and upheld the life term of Malik.