A Delhi court on Monday awarded the death penalty to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla for kidnapping and killing IT professional Jigisha Ghosh in the national capital in 2009. Third convict Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life in prison.
“To be hanged by neck till death,” Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav said while awarding the sentence.
“The offence was committed in a brutal, cold blooded and cruel manner. The victim was helpless and remained in captivity for hours and the convicts brutally mauled her to death. It was an uncivilised act done in a barbaric manner," he said.
Jigisha, an operations manger at Hewitt Associate, was abducted and killed in March 2009 after she was dropped at her home in Vasant Vihar by an office cab. The police had recovered the body near Surajkund in Haryana.
The compensation to the parents will be paid out of the Rs. 9.80 lakh fine imposed on the three convicts.
Besides, the court asked the Delhi Legal Services Authority (South District) for awarding adequate and proper compensation to the victim’s parents.
The father retired as a Deputy Director from the Union Health Ministry and was making do “with the assistance of the victim’s earning,’’ Mr. Yadav noted in his judgment.
“The crime in the present case was committed against a woman. Gruesome crimes against women are on the rise in recent years. Any leniency in such cases will send a very wrong message in society and will encourage criminals like the convicts,’’ the Judge said, while rejecting the plea for lenient punishment by counsel for the convicts.
“The offence in the present case was committed in a cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner. The innocent, helpless and vulnerable victim remained in the captivity of the convicts for hours. The victim pleaded with the convicts not to take her life and to save her. She handed over her debit card and other belongings to the convicts. She also disclosed the PIN number of the debit card to the convicts. However, the convicts were satisfied only by brutally mauling her to death. In other words the convicts behaved in an uncivilised and barbaric manner against a helpless girl,’’ the Judge said in the sentence order.
The prosecution had sought death sentence for all the three convicts, submitting that they had abducted and murdered the 28-year-old IT professional just for ‘monetary pleasure.’
Special Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan said there was no remorse on the faces of the three accused after having drawn cash from an ATM through the debit card of the deceased and later making purchases on it after killing her.
The court on July 14 had held the three accused guilty of abducting, robbing and killing Jigisha in the capital in 2009.
