But the family of the teenage boy they kidnapped and killed in Hoshiarpur in 2005 is vehemently opposed to the move.
Life seems to have come full circle for this couple in Punjab. Jasbir Singh, who is on death row, and his wife Sonia, who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment, now want conjugal rights to bear a child.
But the family of the teenage boy they kidnapped and killed in this town in Punjab in 2005 is vehemently opposed to the move.
Jasbir Singh and Sonia were sentenced to death, along with their accomplice Vikram Walia, by the district and sessions court here in December 2006 for the cold-blooded murder of 16-year-old Abhi Verma.
Singh and Walia are now facing the gallows as their sentence was upheld by the high court and the Supreme Court. But the apex court reduced the sentence of Sonia, who was the tutor of the victim, to life imprisonment.
Singh and Sonia had been married for eight months when they committed the crime. They have approached the Punjab and Haryana high court to seek conjugal rights.
Abhi's mother Anita Verma said: "This is shameful and a rude shock for us. How can they think of bearing a child after snatching someone else's son?"
"We have come to know that the culprits have filed a petition in the high court through their father, seeking conjugal rights to have a child. We will fight it tooth and nail," Ravi Verma, Abhi's father and a local businessman, said.
Jasbir Singh's father, Jarnail Singh, submitted a plea before the high court in Chandigarh in the first week of April, seeking conjugal rights for his son and daughter-in-law, lodged in Patiala central prison.
The petition said giving conjugal rights to the convicted couple would give the family an heir since he [Jarnail Singh] did not have a son other than Jasbir.
But Abhi's father said: "Abhi, too, was our only son. They killed the innocent boy. Now they want their family tree to continue. They deserve no mercy."
The sensational kidnapping and subsequent murder of Abhi, nicknamed Harry, in February 2005 had shocked the town and resulted in violence.
Abhi's abductors had demanded a ransom of Rs50 lakh from his family. But even as negotiations were on, his naked body was dumped near Adampur town, 20km from Hoshiarpur.
Walia, who masterminded the crime and knew Abhi's family well, even met Ravi Verma after the abduction to know what was happening in the boy's home.
Abhi was kidnapped in a car on February 14, 2005, when he was on his way to school.
Police, who tracked the boy's kidnappers to an isolated house on the outskirts of the town, could only recover his body later from another spot. He had already died after his abductors injected an overdose of a tranquilliser into him.
They dumped his body, but continued the ransom drama till police caught up with them.
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