The Delhi High Court Thursday commuted the death sentence awarded to two convicts — Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla — in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case to life imprisonment, stating that it does not fall in the “rarest of rare” category. However, the bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice I S Mehta upheld the life sentence awarded to the third convict, Baljeet Malik, by the trial court. Defence lawyer Amit Kumar, who appeared for Shukla, said: “We submitted that the prosecution has been unable to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt… The whole case rests on the statement of the guard, who is a plant. This is not enough to award death sentence… After our arguments, the court commuted the death sentence.” However, the High Court upheld their conviction and said the prosecution has been able to successfully prove the circumstances which conclusively point to their guilt. The HC’s observation came while deciding the appeals moved by the three accused against their conviction and death sentence by the trial court in August 2016. The lower court had also slapped a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh on Kapoor, and had directed Shukla and Malik to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh. While it commuted the sentences, the High Court upheld the fines imposed by the trial court. An operations manager at a management consultancy firm, Jigisha (28) was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009, after she was dropped by the office cab around 4 am near her home in Vasant Vihar. Her body was found three days later near Surajkund. It was during the probe into Jigisha’s murder that it came to light that the trio were also allegedly involved in the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan a year earlier. They are facing trial in this case as well. Jigisha father J N Ghosh said: “We are disheartened. The men are criminals… We are planning to visit HGS Dhaliwal, who was the then DCP (south), and decide on our next course of action. We will ask police to approach the Supreme Court.”