Senior IPS officer R K Sharma was awarded life imprisonment by a Delhi court in the sensational Shivani Bhatnagar murder case.
NEW DELHI: Senior IPS officer R K Sharma was on Monday awarded life imprisonment by a Delhi court in the sensational Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, saying he did not deserve the death penalty due to his "excellent" service record.
Three other convicts were also sentenced to life imprisonment for the journalist's gruesome murder, whose trial formally ended on Monday in a rare verdict against an inspector general-rank official.
Additional Sessions Judge Rajender Kumar Shastri, disallowing the prosecution's plea that the convicts be sent to the gallows, said "R K Sharma has got an excellent service record as a police officer and the extreme penalty was not needed in this case."
Pronouncing the quantum of sentence in a packed court room, the judge added "Moreover, the convict Sharma has no previous criminal history."
Besides Sharma, those sentenced to life imprisonment are hired killer Pradeep Sharma, Sri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash.
Apart from the jail sentence in the nine-year-old murder case, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on Sharma and Rs 10,000 each on the other three accused.
Sharma, on 1976-Batch IPS officer, along with three others, was convicted on March 18 for plotting Shivani's murder in her east Delhi apartment on January 23, 1999.
A pensive-looking R K Sharma, wearing a pink T-shirt, was brought to the court room around 2.15 pm. And within minutes, the judge handed down the punishments to him and the other three convicts.
Before the sentencing, Sharma looked worried. But soon after the court awarded a life sentence, he showed signs of relief. However, it seemed, the fact that the judge had not handed down the death penalty took some time to sink into him.
Earlier while convicting R K Sharma, the court had held that he "fostered a grudge" against Shivani and wanted to finish her.
The court had said that the telephone records of the convicts were crucial in completing the chain of events in the murder.
It also ordered action against Suresh Kukreja, a key prosecution witness who turned hostile during the trial, for allegedly giving false evidence.
"It appears that the said witness had deliberately told a lie before the court...a complaint is being lodged for initiating criminal proceedings against him," the court had said.
Kukreja had resiled from a statement that he had handed over a mobile phone to accused R K Sharma during his stay at Pune in 1999.
On March 20, the court had heard the arguments on the quantum of sentence and reserved its order for today.
During the arguments, special public prosecutor S K Saxena had sought the gallows for the Haryana cadre IPS officer and the hired killer Pradeep Sharma for the murder.
Opposing the Prosecution's plea, Sharma's counsel S P Minocha had said just because a journalist was killed by an IPS officer it did not constitute an offence falling under the rarest of rare category, calling for a death penalty.
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