Soumya Viswanathan murder case: SC seeks convicts' reply on mother's plea against bail

The court has directed both the Delhi government and the four convicts to submit their responses to the plea within four weeks.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to four convicts on a plea challenging the bail granted to them by the Delhi High Court in a case related to the 2008 murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan.

A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal sought a reply from the convicts who were enlarged during the pendency of their appeals.

The court also issued a notice to the Delhi police seeking their response within four weeks.

The plea was filed by Madhvi Viswanathan, the mother of the TV journalist.

The Delhi High Court had on February 12, 2024, suspended the life term sentences of Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Singh Malik, and Ajay Kumar, and granted them bail during the pendency of their appeals against conviction and sentence before it.

The HC granted bail to all the four convicts, after considering the fact that all of them had already served 14 years and 9 months of imprisonment.

According to the prosecution, on September 30, 2008, a TV journalist working in a English news channel, Vishwanathan was fatally shot in the early hours of September 30, 2008, on Nelson Mandela Marg in south Delhi while she was returning home from work in her car.

In the case, all four convicts were apprehended and also convicted to two life imprisonments by the trial court on November 2023.

The plea contended the High Court failed to appreciate the agony and heartache of the mother of the deceased who is the petitioner herein, and whose daughter was unwarrantedly murdered for financial gain without any purpose.

The High Court failed to appreciate their criminal antecedents and gravity of the crimes committed by them. It also failed to notice that once these accused are let loose they can continue their previous activities and become a menace to the society, the plea said.

It also contended the High Court has failed to observe that the Sessions Judge, after taking into consideration, extensive incriminating material on record, and after perusing the seriousness and the gravity of the crime convicted the accused to a double life sentence for the offences committed under Section 302 IPC and Section 3(1)(i) of MCOC Act 1999.

"The petitioner is the anguished mother of deceased, who was murdered in cold blood without any rhyme or reason or previous enmity only in order to rob her for the financial gain of their organised crime syndicate by firing bullet upon her while treating her as prey as there was no provocation on the part of the victim against them," the plea said.