After 15 years of investigation, the Delhi court convicts all five defendants in the Soumya Vishwanathan case

The murder trial for Soumya Vishwanathan, who was shot dead on September 30, 2008, was still pending. All five defendants in the murder case have been found guilty, according to the decision delivered on Wednesday by Delhi’s Saket court. Following the conclusion of the defense and campaign parties’ arguments on October 13, the Saket Court withheld its judgment in this matter. while previously stated, Soumya Vishwanathan was shot and killed on September 30, 2008, around 3:30 pm while she was driving home. The Delhi Police said that they believed robbery to be the cause of this murder.

Verdict in the Soumya Vishwanathan Murder Case
All five defendants in the case—Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, Ajay Kumar, and Ajay Sethi—have been found guilty by Delhi’s Saket Court. In connection with the journalist’s murder on September 30, 2008, these five convicted criminals were detained. Since March 2009, the accused have been held in judicial custody, and the Delhi Police has mandated MCOCA for each and every one of them.

In addition to being found guilty under Sections 302 and 34 of the MCOCA, Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Ajay Kumar, and Baljeet Malik were also found guilty of murder with the purpose to rob her. Ajay Sethi, the fifth defendant, was found guilty in accordance with Sections 3(2) and 3(5) of the MCOCA and Section 411 of the IPC.

The manner of Soumya Vishwanathan’s murder.
When Soumya Vishwanathan, a television journalist, was assassinated at the Nelson Mandela Road, she was 25 years old and employed by Headlines Today, which is now known as India Today. According to the authorities, it was an armed robbery. On September 30, 2008, in the early hours, Soumya Vishwanathan was shot in the head while returning from work. According to court documents, the police at Vasant Kunj Police Station got a report regarding the incident at approximately 3:45 AM.

After a year, the investigation gets underway.
In this instance, there has been “delayed justice” from the beginning. The real inquiry didn’t start until long after the tragedy, and it took more than ten years to reach a conclusion. While the murder occurred on September 30, 2008, and a FIR for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was filed on same day, the inquiry made significant progress on March 21, 2009, when Jigisha Ghosh’s corpse was found in Faridabad. In this instance, three people—Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, and Baljeet Malik—were taken into custody.

Baljeet Malik reportedly admitted to being involved in the murder of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan during the investigation and interrogation of the second case. Later, Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi, the other two defendants, were also taken into custody. It might be stated that the Jigisha Ghosh case saved the Soumya Vishwanathan Case probe from additional delay.

According to several sources, accused Ravi Kapoor shot the journalist in the head, killing her, after first shooting at her vehicle to get her to stop.

Later Delays in Soumya Vishwanathan’s Justice
In October 2009, Delhi Police charged all five defendants under the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA), alleging that the defendants were engaged in “organized gang activity,” which is required to bring charges under the strict statute. Since the accused won’t be granted bond for at least six months, the police felt that the strict rule would be beneficial.

Investigations persisted, and a significant setback occurred in 2014 when the public prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Rajeev Mohan, apparently resigned to pursue a private practice. In November of the following year, Mohan was reappointed as public prosecutor by Lieutenant Najeeb Jung of Delhi. The defendants were sentenced in August 2016, eight years after the crime, although not for the Jigisha Ghosh crime Case. MK Vishwanathan, the father of Soumya Vishwanathan, complained to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal over the ongoing delay in his daughter’s murder case in 2016.

The death sentences for Kapoor and Shukla were converted to life terms of imprisonment in January 2018, while Malik’s life sentence was also maintained. On February 27, 2019, the Delhi High Court directed the Trial Court to’speed up’ the trial of Soumya Vishwanathan’s murder case on the basis of the plea entered by an accused, three years after Soumya Vishwanathan’s complaint to the CM.

The trial continued for three more years, and on September 1, 2022, the concluding arguments were presented before Additional Sessions Judge Ravindra Kumar Pandey. On October 18, the Delhi Court found Kapoor, Shukla, Malik, and Kumar guilty of the murder, as well as Sethi for receiving stolen goods. All five defendants were also found guilty under the MCOCA. A month later, on October 13, Justice Pandey reserved the verdict in the case.

Certainly, “better late than never,” but the parents of the young woman who died and the family of the ambitious daughter who died have been waiting for justice to be served. Because of no fault of her own, Soumya Vishwanathan was forced to abandon her life, give up on her dreams, and live apart from her parents, friends, and family. Her parents also had to wait fifteen long years for the court to render justice and see those who killed their daughter punished. After the judgment was announced, Soumya Vishwanathan’s mother gave the investigating officer a big embrace and said to ANI, “We lost our daughter, but this (verdict) will act as a deterrent for others also.” She argued that the punishment should be “life imprisonment” in length.