New Delhi: A Delhi court today sentenced four convicts in the killing of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan in 2008 to life imprisonment, while a fifth convict was sent to three years in jail. The court said the crime does not fall under the rarest of rare and hence did not give the convicts the death penalty.
Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, and Ajay Kumar have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The fifth convict, Ajay Sethi, has been sentenced to simple for three years for helping them.
September 30, 2008, was just another day for 25-year-old journalist Soumya Vishwanathan. A news producer with Headlines Today, she had stayed back late to help out with a breaking news event. Her work was done, she left the Jhandewalan office at 3.03 am, got into her car, and drove home to Vasant Kunj. She didn't know this drive would be her last, that a late-night robbery attempt would brutally cut her life short.
On her way back, Soumya overtook a car occupied by Kapoor, Shukla, Kumar, and Malik, police officers who probed the case said.
The four convicts, police said, noticed that the woman driver who overtook them was alone. They sped up and started following. First, they tried to intercept Soumya's car. She did not stop. Kapoor then fired at her with a countrymade weapon. The bullet hit her on the head, killing her instantly. The car crashed against a divider on Nelson Mandela Marg, close to her home, and came to a halt.
The killers fled the scene, an officer said but returned 20 minutes later to check the victim's condition. When they saw police personnel, they ran away.
On October 18, the judge had convicted the four accused under Indian Penal Code section 302 (murder) and provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).