Plea of prime accused in journalist murder case dismissed

NEW DELHI - The Delhi High Court Monday dismissed the plea of the prime accused in the murders of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and and IT executive Jigisha Ghosh seeking a speedy trial.

Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra declined Ravi Kapoor’s plea saying that there is no fault with the approach adopted by the trial court.

The court, however, directed that the trial court shall continue the trial of the case with priority being accused persons in jail and looking into the year of offence. Kapoor, along with Baljeet Singh Malik, Amit Shukla and Ajay Kumar, is facing trial for the murder of the journalist and the IT executive.

Ajay Sethi, the fifth accused in the case has been charged under milder penal provisions dealing with keeping stolen property. Kapoor had allegedly shot Soumya on the night of Sep 30, 2008, when she was returning home by her car from office at around 3:30 am.

In another case, 28-year-old Jigisha Ghosh, an operations manager with Hewitt Associates in Noida, was smothered to death in the early hours of March 18, 2009, after she was dropped by the office car at her CPWD housing colony near the PVR Priya complex.

Subsequently, these accused were booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) after police argued they were involved in several such cases.