SC allows remission of one of the convicts in Madhumita Shukla murder case

New Delhi [India], May 15 : The Supreme Court on Friday allowed a plea seeking premature release of one of the convicts in the 2003 murder case of 26-year-old poet Madhumita Shukla, while observing that the nature of an offence cannot be the sole ground for denying remission.

A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that convict Rohit Chaturvedi has spent 22 years in jail without remission.

It set aside the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated July 9, 2025, which had rejected the Uttarakhand government's recommendation for the premature release of Chaturvedi.

The apex noted that MHA has passed a "non-speaking and cryptic" order, and said that any order affecting the rights of a person and particularly his liberty, must be with reasons and must reflect due application of mind.

"Recording of reasons is not an empty formality; it is a safeguard against arbitrariness and ensures transparency, fairness, and accountability in decision-making. The absence of reasons renders it bald and makes it impossible to ascertain whether relevant factors were duly considered or not," the judgement stated.

It said, "Crime is one thing, reformation is different. The focus of the State should be reformation, not retribution."

"We have no hesitation to hold that the impugned letter dated July 9, 2025, of MHA, which rejected the recommendation of the State of Uttarakhand and disallowed the plea of premature release of the petitioner, is arbitrary, non-speaking, unsustainable in law and merit and is therefore set aside and quashed," the verdict added.

The top court remarked that executive discretion, though broad in matters of remission, is not "uncanalised" and must necessarily be exercised on relevant, rational, and non-discriminatory considerations.

"Remission is not an extension of the sentencing process, but a distinct executive function concerned with the present and future, namely, the prisoner's conduct, evidence of reformation, and prospects of reintegration into society. To predicate its denial only on the heinous nature of the offence is to collapse this distinction and to reconvert remission into a retrospective reaffirmation of guilt, which the criminal justice system has already adjudicated upon," the judgement said.

It noted that Chaturvedi is already out on bail and need not surrender.

On May 9, 2003, Shukla was shot dead in Lucknow's Paper Mill Colony while she was pregnant. Former Uttar Pradesh minister Amarmani Tripathi was arrested in September 2003 in connection with the killing of a woman with whom he was allegedly in a relationship.

Subsequently, other accused were also arrested in connection with a conspiracy to kill Shukla.

A Dehradun trial court in Uttarakhand had on October 24, 2007, convicted Tripathi, his wife Madhumani, his nephew Rohit Chaturvedi and his associate Santosh Kumar Rai for Shukla's murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

The High Court had upheld the conviction, and later the Supreme Court affirmed the verdicts.

Chaturvedi, convicted of criminal conspiracy and murder, had applied for premature release to the Uttarakhand government.

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