Jigisha Ghose Murder: Delhi HC commutes death penalty of two convicts to life

The Delhi High Court today commuted the death sentence of Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, who were convicted for the murder of 28-year-old woman Jigisha Ghose, to life imprisonment..Ghose, who was working as an Operations Manager at Hewitt Associates Private Limited, was abducted, robbed and murdered in 2009. The trial court convicted the three accused (Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljeet Malik) for the ghastly act in 2016..The trial court had held that Kapoor and Shukla were incapable of being reformed based on their conduct in jail and their involvement in other criminal cases, and had accordingly awarded them the death penalty, while sentencing Malik to life imprisonment..The three accused then challenged the verdict in the High Court, questioning the veracity of the testimonies given by the witnesses. However, the High Court held that the prosecution had successfully proven the circumstances that conclusively point to the guilt of each of the accused..Coming to the issue of the death penalty, the Division Bench of Justices S Muralidhar and IS Mehta stated that it was not clear as to which of the three accused actually committed the murder. Therefore, to differentiate between the accused by awarding the death penalty to two of them may not be justified..As for the conduct of Kapoor and Shukla in jail, the Court observed that,.“The behaviour of a prisoner during his term as an under trial cannot be a sufficient marker for his potential for reform and rehabilitation. It might be unsafe to conclusively determine, even while the prisoner is an under trial, that his conduct in prison can indicate his capacity for reformation. Such a determination would require observing the prisoner over some periods of time separated sufficiently in time and circumstance.”.While considering the decisions of the Supreme Court in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab and Mohinder Singh v. State of Punjab, the Court held that it was not satisfied that the crime fell within the ambit of the ‘rarest of rare’ cases..“Having carefully considered the entire case from all perspectives, the Court is not satisfied that the crime here can be characterised as “rarest of rare” that warrants the award of the death penalty…”.The Court, therefore, commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment..Read Judgment: