NEW DELHI: Reacting to Tahir Hussain’s life sentence in the Ankit Sharma murder case, Delhi law minister Kapil Mishra on Friday described it as “the beginning of justice” and said he hoped the Delhi high court would convert the sentence into the death penalty.In a post on X, Mishra said, “The cruelty with which Ankit Sharma was killed, stabbed with knives even after death, the body thrown into a drain—this is certainly the ‘Rarest of Rare’. It is hoped that in the High Court, this life imprisonment will be converted to the death penalty.”Earlier in the day, a Delhi court sentenced Hussain and four others to life imprisonment for the murder of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma during the 2020 northeast Delhi riots.Additional Sessions Judge Praveen Singh pronounced the sentence after hearing arguments on the quantum of punishment. The court observed that the prosecution had failed to prove that the convicts were beyond the possibility of reformation.The judgment was delivered in the presence of Hussain and the four other convicts under tight security inside the courtroom.Before the sentence was announced, Delhi Police had sought the death penalty for all five convicts, arguing that the case fell under the “rarest of rare” category.
