New Delhi, March 11 The Delhi High Court on Monday rebuked convict Ravi Kapoor, who's serving life sentence for the murder of IT executive Jigisha Ghosh, for filing two similar pleas seeking parole to attend his niece's wedding.
The high court had on February 19 asked the state authorities to decide within 10 days on Kapoor’s parole application, after which he filed one more plea.
Justice Anoop Kumar Mendiratta, who presided over the case, dismissed both the applications and criticised Kapoor for what the court deemed as "misuse of the legal process".
While recognising Kapoor's right to seek parole, the court condemned his actions as overreaching the judicial process.
The court noted that Kapoor failed to withdraw the initial plea before filing the second one, raising doubts about the petitioner's intentions.
Kapoor had moved the high court in January seeking three months' parole to attend his niece's wedding in March, and to maintain social ties with his parents and other family members. During the pendency of the first application, Kapoor filed a second plea seeking the same relief.
His counsel attributed this to a typographical error in the initial plea, and told the court that an application to withdraw the first petition had been filed.
However, the state's counsel argued that the second petition contradicted Kapoor's claim of not filing similar pleas before the court or the Supreme Court.
The high court noted discrepancies in the withdrawal process of the first petition and observed that its previous remarks on Kapoor's pending cases might have prompted the filing of the second plea.
Despite the court's displeasure, Kapoor was spared heavy costs, as the court refrained from imposing them.
Kapoor, who was convicted for the murders of journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and Jigisha Ghosh, was recently granted bail by the high court in Vishwanathan's case pending his appeal challenging his conviction and sentence.
In January, the high court denied Kapoor's parole application considering the seriousness of the offences committed by him.
Initially sentenced to death by a trial court in 2016 for Jigisha Ghosh's murder, Kapoor's sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment by the Delhi High Court.
Jigisha Ghosh (28) was kidnapped and killed in March 2009, while Vishwanathan was shot dead in September 2008.
The recovery of the weapon used in Jigisha's killing had led to the resolution of the Vishwanathan murder case. The police attributed robbery as the motive behind both the killings.
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