Delhi High Court on Friday ordered release of tandoor murder case convict Sushil Sharma with immediate effect.
He had approached the Delhi High Court contending that he has already undergone the maximum prescribed sentence as mandated under the sentence review board guidelines.
The division bench of Justice Sidharth Mridul and Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal held that the division of sentence review board, which recently rejected Sharma's premature release from jail, is arbitrary, whimsical and illegal.
The bench also said that the Supreme Court in 2013 had already committed his death sentence to life sentence. Furthermore, the court also said there is no evidence to show that the convict cannot be reformed and rehabilitated, and he also needs to take care of his parents who are above 80 years of age.
The court while giving the order also took note of the recommendations of the social welfare department, prison authorities and the chief probation officers.
In 2013, the Supreme Court commuted Sushil Sharma's death sentence to life imprisonment. Sharma's counsel had pleaded that the case did not fall in the rarest of the rare category; he had also submitted that the conviction was entirely based on the circumstantial evidence, and death penalty cannot be awarded.
Naina Sahni was the wife of Sushil Sharma and was claimed to had an illegitimate extramarital affair with Matloob Karim, an old friend of hers. Sharma was the then Delhi Youth Congress president.
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