The Supreme Court today refused to grant 15 days parole to a life convict, who is also facing trial in the sensational 2008 murder case of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan.
A bench of justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan termed the conduct of Ravi Kapoor in jail as "unsatisfactory" and set aside the order of Delhi High Court granting him parole and bail.
The high court had granted him bail and paroles in three different cases on the ground of allowing him to file appeal in apex court against his life sentence awarded to him in one case.
The bench said though it is very liberal in granting parole to the accused but in the instant case, Kapoor can easily file appeal in apex court from jail as per the prison norms.
The counsel for Kapoor said that there are some technical points which need to be looked into and a 15-day parole should be granted to him.
Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for Delhi Police, opposed the parole plea and said that Kapoor was involved in the murder of two single working women.
He said, "The convict was held guilty in one case and trial court had awarded him death penalty considering the crime as rarest of rare. The death penalty was later commuted to life sentence."
Singh said that the accused may run away, if he is allowed to go out of jail on parole.
To this, the bench said, "we have to ensure that he doesn't run away. He is a life convict. Let him make alternate arrangements for filing the appeal."
Kapoor's counsel said that the court may release him for just 15 days on stringent conditions.
The bench while refusing to grant him parole said that he cannot be release on this ground and even his conduct in jail is "unsatisfactory".
The apex court had on July 13, stayed three orders of the high court granting parole and bail to Kapoor and sought his response on the plea of Delhi Police challenging his release.
Police has contended that Kapoor was a dreaded criminal involved in various cases.
Kapoor was also convicted in the 2009 murder case of business executive Jigisha Ghosh and awarded death sentence by a trial court. But the capital punishment was later commuted to life term by the high court earlier this year.
The trial in the Soumya murder case is pending before a trial court here.
Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008, when she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours. The police had earlier claimed robbery as the motive behind the killing of both Jigisha and Soumya.
On January 4, the high court had reduced to life sentence the death penalty awarded to two of the three convicts in the Jigisha murder case, saying the crime did not qualify as "rarest of rare" warranting capital punishment.
The high court, while modifying the death penalty awarded to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, had also confirmed the life sentence to the third convict, Baljeet Malik, in the murder case.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jigisha, 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 4 am near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi. Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
