Sharma, 3 others get life in jail for Shivani murder

Nine years after the murder of The Indian Express staffer Shivani Bhatnagar, a Delhi court today handed life imprisonment...

Nine years after the murder of The Indian Express staffer Shivani Bhatnagar, a Delhi court today handed life imprisonment terms to suspended IPS officer R K Sharma and three others for plotting and executing her killing.

Additional sessions judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, discarding the prosecution’s demand for death penalty to “conspirator” Sharma and hired killer Pradeep, awarded the four convicts — Sharma, Pradeep, Sri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash — the minimum punishment under the murder charge. Their lawyers later said they would appeal against the order.

Shivani was murdered in her East Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999.

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“Considering the manner in which the murder was carried out, the criminal history of the convicts and that Sharma has served the society as a police official, I do not find it to be a rarest of rare case warranting the death penalty,” ASJ Shastri said while pronouncing the quantum of sentence in a packed courtroom.

Proceedings in the court lasted barely 15 minutes today. Sharma looked at ease and kept smiling. After the court sentence, the smile broadened and Sharma was seen talking to his lawyers.

The judge imposed a penalty of Rs 20,000 on the suspended Haryana-cadre IPS officer while the other three were directed to pay a fine of Rs 10,000 each.

Relying on credible circumstantial evidence, the court on March 18 convicted Sharma, Pradeep, Sri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash for plotting Shivani’s murder. It held that Sharma colluded with the others to get Shivani killed as he feared she would ruin his social status by exposing their “intimate” relations. Shivani was at her home with her infant son at the time of the murder. Her body bore 10 stab wounds and strangulation marks.

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During arguments on the point of sentence, the prosecution sought capital punishment for Sharma and Pradeep while the defence opposed the notion that the murder was in any way “uncommon” or that it had shaken “the conscience of society”.

In the 13-page sentence order, ASJ Shastri accepted the defence plea and held that Shivani’s murder was an “abominable and heinous crime” but did not shock society’s conscience.

“I am not in consonance with the prosecutor labelling Sharma as a danger to society,” said the judge after discussing a catena of Supreme Court judgments that have laid the guidelines for sentencing a convict to death.

While deciding the quantum of sentence, the court termed 54-year-oldSharma’s distinguished services to the country as a “cogitating” factor and said: “Except for the crime in question, he is an asset to this nation.”

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Also discussing the theories and implications of sending a person behind bars, the ASJ observed that while it remained the legislative discretion to frame laws regarding appropriate punishment in such cases, the court had no option but to award at least the minimum punishment prescribed by law.

Describing Pradeep, the hired killer, as a “distracted youth,” the court refused to award him the maximum punishment and said that his antecedents and circumstances did not warrant the death penalty. When he was asked by a court staff to deposit the fine amount, Sharma said: “I am not allowed to keep cash with me… I am a beggar. For the last five-and-half years, I have been like a beggar.” Taken aback, the court staffer said it was okay.