A man that murdered his wife in rage, chopped her into pieces and dumped her in a oven will walk out of jail after 23 years, the Delhi High Court announced today.
The man was Sushil Sharma, a youth Congress leader who murdered his wife in Delhi on July 2nd, 1995. Sharma out of anger, murdered his wife Naina Sahni, chopped her body into pieces and dumped them into a tandoor (oven) at restaurant.
The court said he should be released because he had served the maximum sentence of his crime.
Sharma committed the crime because he learnt that his wife had an extra marital affair with another man.
Policemen were patrolling the area, and saw a thick smoke coming from that tandoor and found Naina Sahni’s half burnt body. Sharma was arrested after a week.
The first autopsy conducted on Naina Sahni at Lady Hardinge Medical College was misleading, it said Sahni’s death was caused by burn injuries.
A second autopsy was carried out on orders of Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, this changed the entire direction of the case. The post-mortem report submitted by doctors from three hospitals showed two bullets were lodged in Naina Sahni’s body, one in the head and one in her neck. The lower court sentenced Sharma to death.
Sharma appealed in the Delhi High Court and the High Court upheld the lower court’s death sentence. He then appealed to the Supreme Court but commuted his death sentence to life in October 2013.
Sharma approached the Delhi High Court and requested a release as he had been in jail since 1995.
The Delhi government’s Sentence Review Board (SRB) rejected his request early this year. The Delhi High Court argued against the Review Board’s declaration today, said “The Sentence Review Board cannot say no, this murder was brutal, so we will not release him. He is incarcerated for over 25 years including remission. Does it not infringe upon his human rights, which are inalienable rights.”
