All You Need To Know About 2008 Journalist Soumya Vishwanathan Murder Case That Shocked Delhi
Soumya Vishwanathan was shot dead in the national capital on September 30, 2008. She was 25 years old at the time and worked for India Today.
A court in Delhi on Wednesday, October 18, 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 working with India Today, which was then called Headlines Today. She was the only child of Vishwanathan and Madhavi, who hailed from Kerala.
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What happened on September 30, 2008?
On the night of September 30, 2008, Soumya was on her way home in Delhi's Vasant Kunj in her car when she was attacked by a group of robbers at Nelson Mandela Marg.
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She was reportedly shot while trying to flee the robbers, and her body was found in the car with a bullet mark on her forehead.
Who are the accused?
A murder case was registered in the Vasant Vihar Police Station, and the investigators had 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.
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How were the accused arrested?
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?
Delhi Police, on June 22, 2009, filed a first charge sheet against all five accused persons under section 302 (murder) and 34 (Common intention) IPC. The court had framed charges against all accused persons except Ajay Sethi for the offence of murder.
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On October 8, 2009, the first supplementary charge sheet was filed by Delhi police under MCOCA against accused Ravi Kapoor.
On May 9, 2011, the court charged all accused persons under MCOCA for allegedly running an organised crime syndicate.
Conviction in Jigisha murder case
Malik, Kapoor and Shukla were convicted in the killing of Jigisha Ghosh, and two of them were sentenced to death in 2016.
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In 2017, the high court commuted the death sentences of Kapoor and Shukla to life imprisonment while upholding Malik's life term in Ghosh's murder case.
Why the case took 15 years
The Delhi government had appointed a Special Public Prosecutor (SPP), and the case was assigned to a special MCOCA Court to fast-track the hearing.
Later on, the SPP resigned from his post. The Prosecution evidence took almost 10 years to be concluded.
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Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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