Jigisha murder case: Court convicts three men

Three men were today convicted for murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh here in 2009 by a city court which said it was "abundantly clear" that they had committed the crime.

28-year-old Jigisha, working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009 after she was dropped by her office cab around 0400 hours near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi. Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana, police had said.

Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav held accused Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik guilty of the offences of murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and common intention under the IPC. Kapoor was also convicted for the offence of using firearms under the Arms Act.

While pronouncing the judgement, the judge said "they (accused) committed her murder and disposed of her body in bushes and circumstantial evidence makes it clear that it was these men who committed the crime.

"It is abundantly clear from evidence that they committed the crime. There is no missing link of crime (and) hence innocence is ruled out. It is proved on record that Jigisha did not return home on expected time on the day of incident."

The court said it was proved that the three convicts had abducted Jigisha, robbed her of her gold chain, two mobile phones, two rings and debit and credit cards and killed her.

The court fixed August 20 for hearing arguments on quantum of sentence.

It also asked Delhi's Home Secretary to immediately appoint probation officers for filing reports on the background of the convicts and their conduct in jail.

The court had reserved the verdict on July 5 after hearing final arguments of the prosecutor and defence counsel.

Earlier, Special Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan had said there was ample evidence against the accused to hold them guilty of the offences.

Advocate Amit Kumar, appearing for accused Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik, had argued that prosecution has not been able to probe its case beyond reasonable doubt and there was no evidence which could connect the accused persons for the offence of murder.

The three convicts are currently in jail under judicial custody. 

The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009 and the trial began on April 15, 2010, with the examination of her father as the first prosecution witness.

The court had framed charges against the accused under IPC and Arms Act, dealing with murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and using firearms.

Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha's murder had led to the 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.

Police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killing of both Jigisha and Soumya.

The accused had used Jigisha's ATM card to buy expensive goggles, wrist watches and shoes from Sarojini Nagar market, police had said.