New Delhi: After almost 15 years of the crime, the Saket Court of New Delhi has sentenced life imprisonment to the four convicts of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan’s case. These convicts are: Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla, Baljit Malik and Ajay Kumar. The fifth convict, Ajay Sethi, has been sentenced to three years of imprisonment.

The court has noted that this act of the four convicts doesn’t fall in the category of ‘rarest of rare’, and hence a death penalty cannot be imposed.

Soumya Vishwanathan a journalist with India Today group, was shot dead on September 30, 2008, while returning home after working till early hours. She was murdered at South Delhi’s Nelson Mandela Marg.

Police who probed this matter told PTI that Soumya overtook a car while coming back home from work around 03:00 hours. It was then that the four convicts sitting in the other car realized that she was alone. Soumya didn’t stop when they tried to intercept her. Then Ravi Kapoor fired at her from his car. The bullet hit her head killing her instantly. The perpetrators also came back again after 20 minutes to check the victim’s state near the car that crashed against the divider.
After seeing the police at the crime scene, they fled.

Finding a piece of evidence and getting closer to the culprits was really difficult for Delhi police in this case and there was no physical contact between Soumya Vishwanathan and her killers.