Tandoor murder case: Delhi government to move Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Delhi government will challenge the release of tandoor murder case convict Sushil Kumar Sharma in Supreme Court. Home minister Satyendar Jain has asked his department to file a special leave petition challenging last year’s order of Delhi high court granting release to Sharma. A former youth Congress leader, Sharma was arrested in July 1995 and subsequently convicted of shooting his wife, Naina Sahni, before burning her chopped body parts in a tandoor on July 2.
In December last year, Delhi high court had observed that even convicted prisoners had fundamental rights and ordered his immediate release.
Sharma had challenged the decision of the sentence review board (SRB) of Delhi government refusing to release him on remission and a subsequent order of LG Anil Baijal upholding SRB’s decision. Before his release, Sharma had spent over 23 years in jail. SRB examines records of convicts who have spent more than 14 years in jail. After shooting his wife with his licensed revolver, Sharma took her body to a restaurant where he chopped it into several pieces and tried to burn them in the tandoor.
The death sentence to Sharma, awarded by a trial court in 2003, was commuted to life imprisonment by Supreme Court. The trial court’s decision was upheld by high court in 2007. While commuting the death sentence into life sentence, Supreme Court had, however, stated that “life sentence is for the whole of the remaining life of Sharma, subject to remission granted by the appropriate government under the Code of Criminal Procedure”.
SRB took up multiple cases at its meetings last year, including that of Sharma, and finally declined his plea for release. SRB, which was constituted in 2004 on the directives of Supreme Court, is chaired by Delhi home minister and has representatives from Delhi Police, home department and Tihar Jail as its members.
A source said that as per the procedure, the special leave petition should be filed within 90 days of the verdict. In this case, the government plans to file an application detailing the reasons for the delay along with SLP.