New Delhi:
A hand tattoo, a wireless set stolen from a police officer and CCTV footage helped Delhi Police solve the case of IT professional Jigisha Ghosh’s murder and eventually led investigators to the killers of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan, officials said on Wednesday.
Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljeet Malik, who were arrested for Ghosh’s murder in 2009, later confessed to their involvement in Vishwanathan’s murder in 2008.
A Delhi court on Wednesday convicted four persons – Kapoor, Shukla, Malik and Ajay Kumar – of an organized crime syndicate of murder and other offenses for Vishwanathan’s murder.
The court also convicted the fifth accused Ajay Sethi under Section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) for conspiracy to abet, aid or knowingly commit organized crime to knowingly facilitate and receive the proceeds of organized crime.
Following the trio’s confessional statements, Delhi Police arrested Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi and booked all five for the murder of Vishwanathan on September 30, 2008, when she was returning home from work.
Ghosh was looted and murdered on March 18, 2009.
“Jigisha’s murder case was solved two to three days after her body was recovered from Faridabad’s Suraj Kund area. We had gotten the first clue from CCTV footage where we discovered that one of the suspects had a tattoo on his hand while shopping with Jigisha’s bank card. Another had a wireless set with him and was wearing a cap,” Atul Kumar Verma, the investigating officer of the case, told PTI.
The officers then meticulously worked on the human intelligence network of the Delhi Police and soon the police team reached Malik’s residence in Masoodpur. Kapoor and Shukla were subsequently arrested.
Malik had his name written on his hand while Kapoor carried a wireless set that he had taken from a police officer.
“They revealed that they kidnapped Jigisha near her house in Vasant Vihar and later murdered and dumped her body after looting her. They also did shopping using her bank cards,” Verma said.
Verma led a team of officials from Vasant Vihar police station.
“We were a bit shocked when Ravi Kapoor himself revealed that they had committed the murder of another girl at Nelson Mandela Marg, which was not far from Vasant Vihar,” Verma said. He also said that two other associates – Ajay Kumar and Ajay Sethi – were involved in that murder.
The then Deputy Commissioner of Police (South), HGS Dhaliwal, immediately set up another team of officers and appointed the then ACS Bhisham Singh to investigate both the murder cases.
Singh told PTI, “Since we had just obtained a confession from the accused in the Soumya murder case, the biggest challenge ahead was also to collect forensic evidence.” Describing the night Vishwanathan was murdered, police said Kapoor was driving a Maruti Wagon R car and Shukla was sitting next to him. Malik and Kumar occupied the backseat. They were all drunk, police said.
“On September 30, a car whizzed past their vehicle. It was a Maruti Zen that Soumya was driving back to her home in Vasant Kunj. She was returning from the TV Today office which was then located at Videocon Tower in Karol Bagh,” said one another officer, OP Thakur, one of the investigators, said.
When they saw that a female driver was overtaking them and that she was alone, they increased the speed of their vehicle and got closer to her vehicle.
First they tried to waylay her, and when she failed to stop her car, Kapoor opened fire on Vishwanathan’s vehicle. The bullet hit her in the temple, leaving her dead on the spot.
Vishwanathan’s car stopped after ramming into a divider.
“All the suspects fled the spot but returned 20 minutes later to check her condition. When they saw police personnel, they ran away,” the officer said.
“We are very satisfied today. The conviction actually happened for three reasons: a criminal weapon recovered from the suspect, the forensic sketch of the scene and the sequence of the incident was consistent with the suspect’s confessional statement,” Singh said. said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
