15-Year Long Wait For Justice: Vishwanathan Murder Case To Be Heard On October 18

A city court Friday reserved its judgment in the 2008 murder of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan for October 18.

Additional Sessions Judge Ravindra Kumar Pandey directed all the accused to be present in the court when he delivers the verdict.

The court had on October 6 noted that arguments by the defence and the prosecution were complete, and posted the matter for today for additional arguments or clarifications.

Soumya Vishwanathan was shot dead on September 30, 2008 while returning home from work in her car around 3:30 AM. Police had claimed robbery was the motive behind her killing.

Five people- Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljeet Malik, Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi- were arrested for killing her and are in custody since March 2009.

Police had invoked the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the accused.

Malik and two others -- Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla -- were earlier convicted in the 2009 killing of IT executive Jigisha Ghosh.

Recovery of the weapon used in Jigisha Ghosh's killing had led to the cracking of the murder case of Vishwanathan, police said.

The trial court had awarded death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla and life term to Malik in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case in 2017. The next year, however, the high court had commuted the death sentence of Kapoor and Shukla to life imprisonment and upheld the life term of Malik in the Jigisha murder case.