Soumya Vishwanathan murder: Court defers hearing on sentence as report not filed by DLSA

New Delhi [India], November 7 (ANI): Delhi's Saket District Court on Tuesday deferred hearing on arguments on sentence as the verification of affidavits of convicts reports from the Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DLSA) has not been filed.
The court has directed to file the report by the next date of the hearing.
Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Ravindra Kumar Pandey directed the Secretary of DLSA to file the verification report by the next date.
However, the pre-sentence report has been filed by the probation officer.
The court has listed November 24, 2023 for hearing arguments on the sentence.
During the hearing, the probation officer appeared before the court and submitted the Pre Sentence Report. Affidavits of all five convicts were also filed.
The judge said that the verification report from the DLSA has not been received on the ground that the original affidavit was received on November 6, 2023.
"It requires at least a week's time to file the verification report related to the affidavit of convicts. In view of the same verification report is directed be filed by the next date of hearing," ASJ Pandey said on Tuesday.
The court took the Pre pre-sentence report on record and a copy of the report in a sealed envelope supplied to the counsels for the accused.
On October 26, the court called for a pre-sentence report (PSR) before hearing the quantum of the sentence.
The principal secretary Delhi government was directed to assign any Probationary Officer (PO) for the task of submitting the PSR.
Secretary DLSA had already filed a victim impact report.
The affidavits of convicts were not filed on the last date.
The convict's counsels had submitted jointly that they were not able to prepare the affidavits as details required for the affidavit were not available to them.
It is further jointly submitted that the pairokar/any of the family members or relatives may be permitted to provide documents to the convict which may be available to them within three days.
The matter is listed for consideration of affidavits, PSR and arguments on sentence.
Additional Sessions Judge Pandey had convicted four accused namely Ravi Kapoor, Ajay Kumar, Baljeet Malik and Amit Shukla for the offence of murder and running a crime syndicate under MCOCA of Saumya Vishwanathan.
Another accused Ajay Sethi was convicted of earning the proceeds of crime. (ANI)