80-year-old Swami Shraddhananda, who has been in jail for the last 29 years for killing his wife for money, has approached the Supreme Court seeking his release. The killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi have recently been released from jail. Therefore, Swami Shraddhananda has filed a petition in court to similarly release him from jail. Through his counsel, Shraddhanand filed the petition before a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli.
Swami Shraddhananda has been serving a jail term since March 1994 in connection with the murder of his wife Shakira. Shakira was the granddaughter of Sir Mirza Ismail, the Diwan of Mysore. Shakira was married to Akbar Khalili, who served as India’s ambassador to Australia and Iran. In 1985, Akbar Khalili and Shakira’s marriage broke up. The very next year, Shakira got married to Shraddhananda.
Advocate Varun Thakur, appearing for Shradhanand, argued before a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justices Hima Kohli and J B Pardiwala that the convict was sentenced to life imprisonment. There is also no parole for the murder he has committed. He had already spent 29 years in jail without meeting anyone. Now that Rajiv Gandhi’s killers have been released from jail, the same benefit should also be granted to Swami Shraddhananda, the counsel pleaded.
Advocate Varun Thakur said, “He has already been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. He has already spent 29 years in jail. He said he did not get parole even for a single day during this period. The convicts in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi have been released after 30 years in jail. This is a violation of the right to equality.”
After hearing the arguments of the lawyers, the court said it would hear Shraddhananda’s plea. Shraddhananda is now over 80 years old. Thakur said that Shraddhananda has been in jail since March 1994. Originally he was awarded the death sentence, but later it was commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court. The lawyer said despite his death sentence, he was kept in solitary confinement in Belagavi jail for three years. He also claimed that he was suffering from many ailments.
In 1991, Swami Shraddhananda drugged Shakira at her bungalow on Richmond Road in Bengaluru in order to rob her of assets worth an estimated Rs 600 crore. He had buried her alive while she was still under the influence of alcohol. Following a court order, the police dug up the ground and pulled out Shakira’s body. Shraddhanand was arrested in the case on April 30, 1994.
In 2000, a trial court in Bengaluru convicted him and sentenced him to death. In 2005, the Karnataka High Court also upheld the death sentence, but in 2008, on an appeal by Shraddhanand, the Supreme Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment without any remedies. The court had said that no person shall meet him in jail and a parole application cannot be filed.
It is interesting to note that while Shraddhananda has been jailed without the facility of parole, the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case were granted paroles regularly. Six convicts serving jail terms, Nalini Sriharan, her Sri Lankan husband Murugan Sriharan, three other Lankan convicts Santhan, Robert Payas and Jayakumar, and an Indian national Ravichandran were released from 4 different jails on 12 November, after the Supreme Court ordered their release. Ravichandran was already out on parole, therefore he went to jail for formalities and came out a free man.
