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 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.

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.

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