The acquittal of Santosh Singh in 1999 led to the investigating agency CBI, challenge the judgment in the Delhi high court on 29 February 2000.
Justices RS Sodhi and PK Bhasin of Delhi High Court shifted from a traditional lax pace, with hearings every few months, to a day-to-day trial, and judgment was reached in 42 days.
The case is one of several in India that highlight the ineffectiveness of the traditional criminal law system, especially when it comes to high-profile perpetrators, including the Murder of Jessica Lall and Sanjeev Nanda acquittals.
Priyadarshini received her BCom while in Jammu from MAM College, before being accepted to Delhi University to earn an LLB degree.
On the morning of 23 January 1996, Santosh was seen knocking for entrance into Priyadarshini's uncle's house, where she was living, in the Vasant Kunj area of Delhi.
The judgment held the CBI responsible for unfair investigation and failure to produce Virender Prasad, Mattoo’s household help, which resulted in the obstruction of justice.
The police had claimed Prasad had gone missing and was not traceable, yet in the aftermath, a journalist could easily find him in his Bihar village.
The "state had failed to bring home the charge of rape against the accused", and while indicting Santosh as "the man who committed the crime", the judge was constrained to acquit him, because of "the benefit of the doubt".
On 31 August 2006, six years after the initial appeal by CBI, justices RS Sodhi and PK Bhasin took up the case on a day-to-day hearing basis, which is extremely rare in India.
On 17 October 2006, Santosh Singh, who meanwhile had married and become a practicing lawyer in Delhi itself, was found guilty under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape).
It murdered justice and shocked the judicial conscience.In particular, the verdict held that there were no lacunae in the DNA testing and that the combination of the forensic and circumstantial evidence was clinching.
[3] Pronouncing its verdict, the court said the mitigating circumstances under which leniency was begged for Santosh was not enough and the brutal rape and murder do fall in the bracket of "rarest of rare" cases.
The defense lawyers of the accused Santosh Singh questioned the validity of the DNA report, one of the main causes for which he was given the benefit of doubt in the Trial court.
[6] In October 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Santosh Kumar Singh but reduced the death sentence to life imprisonment.
Upon return, he subsequently filed another application for grant of parole (subject matter of Criminal Writ Petition 224/2012) before Delhi High Court.