Priyadarshini Mattoo's killer out on parole

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Monday granted one-month parole to Santosh Kumar Singh who is serving life imprisonment in the Priyadarshini Mattoo rape and murder case.
The high court gave the relief to Singh to allow him to submit his dissertation for his three-year LLM course.
Though Singh sought three months' parole, Justice Mukta Gupta refused to grant parole for so long because, according to Annamalai University rules, two weeks to one month is enough to submit a dissertation.“It can't be three months. Of course not,” the high court said while asking him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 before the court concerned.
The convict is pursuing a course under Annamalai University's distance education programme. He is in the third-year of the course and had sought three months' parole, saying he needs to identify a supervisor before writing his dissertation and attend personal contact programmes on March 7 and 8.
The high court had granted him parole in May last year for 13 days for writing his second-year exams. He had been granted parole in 2012 for his first year exams.
Singh, a law student in Delhi University, had raped and murdered Mattoo, a third-year law student, in January 1996. He was acquitted by the trial court on December 3, 1999, but the Delhi HC on October 27, 2006 reversed that decision, holding him guilty of rape and murder.
The high court had also awarded death penalty to him in the case.
Singh, the son of a former senior IPS officer, had challenged his conviction and death sentence awarded by the high court. In October 2010, the Supreme Court had upheld Singh's conviction but reduced the death sentence to life imprisonment.