6-judge SC bench to hear curative plea in Soumya rape case

A six-judge bench of the Supreme Court would hold in-chamber hearing on Thursday, a curative petition in the sensational Soumya rape case in which murder charge was dropped against convict Govindachamy.
This case had also led to the issuance of contempt notice against former SC judge Justice Markandey Katju, who had criticised the verdict, for making some remarks against serving judges in one of his blogs. Later, he tendered an apology, leading to withdrawal of the contempt proceedings against him.
A bench, comprising Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices Ranjan Gogoi, P C Pant, U U Lalit, Dipak Misra and J Chelameswar, will consider the matter in the chamber.

Justices Gogoi, Pant and Lalit had on September 15 last year dropped the murder charge against the convict, but had upheld the life term for raping the 23-year-old sales representative in Kerala.
The verdict had left the victim's family in shock. They had dubbed it as "heart breaking", saying it was "failure" of the state prosecutor to "properly" present the case in court.
In the 22-page verdict, the apex court had discharged Govindachamy under section 302 (murder) of IPC, in which the maximum sentence is capital punishment, saying there was no intention on his part to kill the victim but only to sexually assault her by keeping her in a supine position.

It had upheld the charges under section 376 (punishment for rape) and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) while altering the conviction for offence of murder to one under Section 325 (punishment for voluntarily causing grievous hurt) of the IPC.

According to the prosecution, the incident took place when Soumya, an employee of a Kochi shopping mall, was travelling in a ladies coach on the Ernakulam-Shoranur passenger train on February 1, 2011. She was attacked and pushed off from the train by Govindachamy, it had said.
It had also said the man jumped off the train, carried the injured woman to a wooded area near the track at Vallathol Nagar and raped her. She succumbed to injuries at the Government Medical College Hospital, Thrissur, on February 6 that year.

The prosecution had pointed out that Govindachamy had already been convicted in eight cases in his native state.
The fast track court in 2012 awarded death sentence to the accused, considering him to be a habitual offender, and held that the brutal rape was one of the reasons for the victim's death and the nature of the crime was savage and had shocked the society.
The High Court had upheld the death sentence two years later, against which he had moved the Supreme Court.
The case also featured Justice Markandey Katju being hauled up for contempt, for making comments on the apex court's decision in a blogpost.