Jigisha murder case: Delhi High Court seeks death row convicts response

By PTI |New Delhi |Published: October 25, 2016 8:01:33 pm

It is mandatory for a trial court to refer a death penalty case to a high court for confirmation of the sentence within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday sought the reply of two death row convicts in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case, whose case file has been sent by the trial court here for confirmation of capital punishment. A bench of justices Gita Mittal and P S Teji also sought personal presence of convicts Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, who were handed down death penalty by the trial court. The bench, which has fixed the matter for further hearing on November 24, also issued production warrants to the two. The sessions judge had sent the case record relating to the conviction and death sentence of Kapoor and Shukla to the high court.

It is mandatory for a trial court to refer a death penalty case to a high court for confirmation of the sentence within 30 days of the pronouncement of the verdict. The trial court had on July 14 held the duo guilty for murder of 28-year-old IT executive Jigisha Ghosh and other counts. While sentencing the two to death on August 22, the trial court had said the girl was killed in a “cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner” and “brutally mauled to death”. It had said the magnitude and brutality exhibited by the convicts made the case ‘rarest of rare’, warranting capital punishment for Kapoor and Shukla. The third offender Baljeet Malik was given reprieve from the gallows for his good conduct in jail. The three have challenged their conviction and order on sentence awarded by the trial court, on which the police were asked by the high court to file their response. Kapoor and Shukla in their appeal have said the trial court has “wrongly held that the case falls in the category of rarest of rare”.

Malik, challenging his conviction and sentence of life term through his counsel Amit Kumar, has said the trial court judge has “failed to appreciate that there were contradictions and discrepancies in the depositions of prosecution witnesses (PWs) and, therefore conviction and the sentence awarded to him is liable to be set aside”. Shukla said the trial court has committed grave error by awarding death penalty to him, simply on the basis of biased jail/probation report about his client. The trial court had imposed varying fines on the convicts. While Kapoor was slapped a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh due to his inability to pay, Shukla and Malik were directed to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh respectively as the pre-sentencing report had suggested they were financially strong. The trio are also facing trial for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan, killed a year before Jigisha.

It had also directed that out of the total fine of Rs 9.8 lakh, Rs six lakh be paid to the parents of the victim, and an adequate compensation amount be decided by the District Legal Service Authority (South). The three have challenged their conviction and order on sentence awarded by the trial court, on which the police were asked by the high court to file their response. Kapoor and Shukla in their appeal have said the trial court has “wrongly held that the case falls in the category of rarest of rare”. Malik, challenging his conviction and sentence of life term through his counsel Amit Kumar, has said the trial court judge has “failed to appreciate that there were contradictions and discrepancies in the depositions of prosecution witnesses (PWs) and, therefore conviction and the sentence awarded to him is liable to be set aside”. Shukla said the trial court has committed grave error by awarding death penalty to him, simply on the basis of biased jail/probation report about his client.

The trial court had imposed varying fines on the convicts. While Kapoor was slapped a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh due to his inability to pay, Shukla and Malik were directed to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh respectively as the pre-sentencing report had suggested they were financially strong. The trio are also facing trial for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan, killed a year before Jigisha. It had also directed that out of the total fine of Rs 9.8 lakh, Rs six lakh be paid to the parents of the victim, and an adequate compensation amount be decided by the District Legal Service Authority (South). The trial court had held the three guilty under several sections of IPC, including 302 (murder), 364 (abducting for murder), 201 (destruction of evidence), 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document). It, however, held that the charge of criminal conspiracy (120-B of IPC) could not be proved against them.

The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009, stating that Jigisha’s post-mortem report revealed that she was killed by smothering. The trial in the case began in April 2010. Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha’s murder had led to cracking of the murder case of Soumya Vishwanathan, who was a journalist with a news channel. Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008 while she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours. The police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killings of both Jigisha and Soumya.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/jigisha-murder-case-delhi-high-court-seeks-death-row-convicts-response-3102521/ (Accessed 20 December 2018) 

High Court upholds death penalty of 3 youths for rape, murder of girl

Tuesday, 26 August 2014 - 2:52pm IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: PTI The Delhi High Court today upheld the death sentence of three youths for abducting, gangraping and killing a 19-year-old girl here, saying the case fell within the realms of the "rarest of rare" category and the convicts acted as "predators" who defiled the victim's body. A division bench of justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Mukta Gupta, dismissed the appeal filed by three youths- Rahul (27), Ravi (23) and Vinod (23) against the death sentence awarded to the by a trial court, saying the crime and the criminal test are satisfied in the case and death sentence can be awarded. "We cannot ignore that in a rarest of rare case where the crime and the criminal test are satisfied, sentence of death can be inflicted for a violent rape followed by murder and specially when the accused have acted as predators, have snatched a member of the society from the society to commit the crime. "Having committed the crime the predators have defiled the body of the victim. Society has to be protected. It cannot be forgotten that punishment is a moral sanction by the society, not merely a penalty such as a parking fine, which may be imposed without the moral weight of a finding of criminal responsibility," the bench said. The court also said that the convicts cannot be punished under the new amended rape law as the amendments were carried out after the commission of the crime. "The legislative response to such kind of crime with effect from February 3, 2013 cannot be applied in the case because the crime was committed prior to the law being amended," it said. The trial court had on February 19 awarded death sentence to the three youths while observing that life imprisonment would be "highly inadequate" as they are "menace to the society". According to the prosecution, the girl, who was working in Gurgaon's Cyber City, was abducted by the three youths in a car near her house in Qutub Vihar here and was gangraped and murdered by them on February 9, 2012. Prosecution had sought death penalty for them, saying the crime committed by them was immensely brutal and aroused feeling of extreme indignation, as the victim's mutilated body was found three days after the incident from a field in Rodhai village in Haryana's Rewari district. The three youths had poured acid into the victim's eyes and had inserted a broken liquor bottle into her private parts, it said. Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-high-court-upholds-death-penalty-of-3-youths-for-rape-murder-of-girl-2013783 [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Supreme Court puts off execution of two men convicted of 2012 Delhi rape

NEW DELHI Mon Jul 14, 2014 7:32pm IST

A police bus carrying four men who were found guilty of the fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a bus, arrives at a court in New Delhi September 13, 2013.

CREDIT: REUTERS/ADNAN ABIDI/FILES

(Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of two men convicted of the murder of a woman who was gang-raped and tortured on a bus in New Delhi, pending their appeal, their lawyer said, in a case that caused nationwide outrage. Gym instructor Vinay Sharma and bus cleaner Akshay Kumar Singh, along with two others, were convicted last year over the December 2012 attack. "The police and the prosecution have falsely implicated them in the case," defence lawyer A.P. Singh said, saying he planned to continue to argue for their acquittal.

In March, the Supreme Court put on hold the execution of two others convicted in the case - fruit-seller Pawan Gupta and unemployed Mukesh Singh - while they appealed. It is not unusual for legal cases to drag on for years in India while convicts appeal. The victim, who worked in a call centre while she studied, became a symbol of the daily dangers women face in a country where a rape is reported on average every 21 minutes and acid attacks and incidents of molestation are common. During the seven-month trial, a fifth defendant hanged himself in his cell. A sixth, who was under 18 at the time of the attack, was sentenced to three years' detention, the maximum allowed under juvenile law.

The minister for women and child development, Maneka Gandhi, told reporters on Sunday that juveniles accused of crimes such as rape and murder should be treated on a par with adult offenders. In response to the public outcry after the rape, the government fast-tracked tougher laws against sex crimes, but it resisted calls to change the law relating to juveniles under 18. 

(Reporting by Sruthi Gottipati and Suchitra Mohanty; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Janet Lawrence)

Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/14/india-gangrape-idINKBN0FJ16T20140714 [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Politics Stalks India's Death Row

FEB. 27, 2014 Contributing Op-Ed Writer By NILANJANA S. ROY NEW DELHI

Backlog is up there next to corruption in the pantheon of small deities who rule the lives of Indians. 

In 2012 there were, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, 414 convicts on death row in jails across the country. The wait for the noose can be very long, as legal appeals and petitions for clemency travel through the courts to the president and back. The wait can be so long, in fact, that on Feb. 18, the Supreme Court commuted to life terms the death sentences of three of the seven men convicted of assassinating Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. The petitions for clemency they sent to the president in 2000 had been lying in some bureaucrat’s desk drawer all this time. 

The judges ruled that the delay was unjustified and therefore cruel. The case might have remained a simple matter of law if the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, J. Jayalalithaa, hadn’t sensed a political opportunity in the midst of pre-election season. Ms. Jayalalithaa, who is of the A.I.A.D.M.K. party, promptly announced that her government interpreted the judgment to mean it could release all seven of the men convicted for the assassination, who are currently incarcerated in Tamil Nadu. Days after that, the Supreme Court issued a restraining order against the state government. Rahul Gandhi, Rajiv’s son and the vice president of the Indian National Congress party, said he was saddened that his father’s killers might be released. The party called the decision “irresponsible.” 

The convicts — who killed 14 people in addition to Rajiv that day — are widely assumed to be members of the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group that resents the role of India in Sri Lanka’s long civil war, and Ms. Jayalalithaa’s position has considerable support among the movement’s many supporters in her state. Even if the Law and Justice Ministry or the judiciary eventually overturns her government’s decision, she will already have scored with constituents. Once again, politics is overshadowing principles. The questions surrounding the fair treatment of Rajiv’s murderers was an opportunity for India to hold a comprehensive discussion on capital punishment. That debate has grown urgent since the resumption of executions in 2012 — there had been just two since 1995 — and rising calls for imposing the death penalty in cases of rape, murder or terrorism. 

Between 2001 and 2011, while death sentences were handed down to 1,455 people, the death sentences of 4,321 convicts were commuted to life terms, according to the Asian Center for Human Rights, citing official statistics. The courts displayed leniency for various reasons, including concern over inordinate procedural delays and new doubts about evidence because of shoddy forensics. Indian presidents have the power to grant clemency — and during the 1990s and 2000s exercised it not infrequently. Then suddenly the pattern broke and the rhythm of executions accelerated. In 2012, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, 97 prisoners were sentenced to death, whereas the capital sentences of only 61 inmates were commuted. 

In November 2012, Ajmal Kasab was hanged for participating in the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008. Last year, Afzal Guru was executed for being a conspirator in the 2001 attack on Parliament in New Delhi. Pranab Mukherjee, who has been president since mid-2012, has been disinclined to grant mercy. State officials and politicians are eager to appear responsive to threats of terrorism and crime. The media seem to promote quick fixes. It takes just one or two hangings for the public to start looking at the scaffold as a solution. Barely a month after Mr. Kasab’s execution, protesters went into the streets decrying the gang rape and subsequent death of Jyoti Singh Pandey, many carrying placards demanding the execution of her aggressors. 

One of those signs lodged in my memory: It was a hand-drawn sketch of men hanging from gallows by the neck, done in black and yellow markers by a child of nine and carried around by his mother. When most of the rapists were sentenced to death, crowds celebrated. Calls for sanctioning rapes, especially, with death sentences have since multiplied. This is troublesome. Putting aside the question of whether capital punishment is moral, this growing sentiment seems to suggest that rape is the worst crime women can suffer. Rarely are there calls for sentencing to death the perpetrators of witch burnings, dowry killings (murders of women whose families don’t offer enough money to their prospective spouses) or lethal acid attacks on women. A.P. Shah, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, has called for discussing whether capital punishment penalizes the poor, minorities or underprivileged castes, and whether in the absence of reliable forensic labs and trained experts, death sentences really are based on sound evidence. “Here one hardly finds a rich or affluent person going to the gallows,” Mr. Shah told Amnesty International last year. 

Every execution, every appeal for clemency, every commuted death sentence is an occasion to reopen the debate over capital punishment. But elections are approaching, and India will pass up its latest chance. This is not what our founders had intended. In 1949, the Constituent Assembly of the then-fledgling country first discussed whether to maintain the death penalty, which India had inherited from its British colonial overseers. Shibban Lal Saksena, a member of Parliament and a former political prisoner under the Raj, made a moving interjection drawing from his personal experience. Of being jailed alongside death row inmates, he said, “I had the misfortune during the 1942 movement to live in a condemned cell for about 26 months and about 37 men were hanged in my presence.” He made a case against capital punishment. 

The Constituent Assembly demurred, leaving it to future Parliaments to decide what to do. But no Parliament has tackled the death penalty with any rigor, leaving the practice in place while the justifications for it still go undiscussed. Whether it’s a chief minister who wants to release convicts whose views are popular with her constituents or a central government that wheels out the gallows to appease the public’s call for executing rapists and terrorists, the problem is the same: Political maneuvering is preventing India from holding a principled debate about when and how the state should kill its own people. 

Nilanjana S. Roy is an essayist and critic, and author of the novel “The Wildings.” 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/opinion/politics-stalks-indias-death-row.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0 [accessed 24 April 2014]

Honour killing: HC commutes to life death sentence of three

Press Trust of India | New Delhi April 17, 2014 Last Updated at 19:16 IST

The Delhi High Court today commuted to life term the death sentence awarded to three members of a family for the honour killing of a teen couple in 2010, saying there is a possibility of their reformation. A special bench of justices S Muralidhar and Mukta Gupta acquitted two others - the girl's mother and aunt - who also had been awarded capital punishment by the trial court, saying they were only "spectators" to the crime and did not share the common intention to murder the couple.

 "The court is of the opinion that ends of justice would be met if convicted appellants Om Prakash and Suraj are awarded the sentence of imprisonment for life which will not be less than 20 years actual. Since, appellant Sanjeev is a young man who was not married, the court considers it fit to sentence him to imprisonment of life subject to remissions.... "Appellants Maya (mother) and Khushboo (aunt) are acquitted of the offences with which they were charged," the bench said.

It said, "The two ladies could be at best be said to be spectators to what was being done by the three men in the house. "No doubt, as a mother and aunt there was an omission on their part to have not saved at least Asha, their daughter. However, the said omission does not qualify the test that they shared the common intention with the three men to commit the murder....," the high court said. Defence lawyer Sumeet Verma had argued that in the absence of an overt act being attributed to Khushboo and Maya, they cannot be convicted for offence of murder on the ground that they shared a common intention to commit the crime.

The court reduced to life term the death sentence awarded to the girl's father, uncle and cousin brother - Suraj, Om Prakash and Sanjeev respectively - saying there is no material placed on record by the State to show they cannot be reformed or are a menace to the society. "Although there are aggravating circumstances, there is no material placed on record by the State to show that the appellants Om Prakash, Suraj and Sanjeev are persons who cannot be reformed or are a menace to the society.... "Thus, this court is of the considered opinion that the penalty of death cannot be awarded to convicted appellants," the bench said.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/hc-commutes-death-penalty-to-life-in-honour-killing-case/ [accessed 24 April 2014]