Govindachamy, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 23-year-old Soumya in Kerala, escaped the noose on Wednesday after the Supreme Court found no clinching evidence to prove that he intended to kill her.
The court found that the convict had only meant to rape her.
Calling the rape “most brutal and grotesque”, a three-judge Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, however, upheld the lower court’s decision to put him behind bars for life.
Setting aside the charge of murder, for which the convict was awarded the capital punishment, it ruled that Govindachamy was guilty of only “voluntarily causing grievous hurt” and reduced his death penalty to seven-year imprisonment.
'Govindachamy did not intend to murder'
In its judgment on the appeal of the accused Govindachamy, sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Soumya Viswanathan in 2009, the Supreme Court said the prosecution was unable to produce any “cogent or reliable” evidence to show that he had pushed her off the train.
Exonerating him of murder, the Supreme Court pointed out that Soumya had survived for a “couple of days after the incident and eventually died in a hospital. This, it observed, "clearly militate against any intention of the accused to cause death.”
However, the Supreme Court ordered both life sentence for rape and this seven-year jail term to run concurrently. This means that Govindaswamy will be in prison for life.
