New Delhi: The Uttarakhand High Court on Monday upheld the life sentence awarded to ex-Samajwadi Party MP Amarmani Tripathi in the Madhumita Shukla murder case. The court also upheld the punishment against all other accused in the case, including Amarmani's wife, Madhumani.
Amarmani and his wife were found guilty of the murder of the poetess nearly a decade ago.
Two other accused in the case, Amarmani’s nephew Rohit Chaturvedi and an acquaintance Santosh Roy were also sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Dehradun in October 2007.
However, Prakash Chandra Pandey, the man accused of having shot dead Madhumita, was acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence.
Pandey had been identified by Madhumita's servant, Desraj, a prime witness in the case. Madhumita's sister Nidhi was another key witnesses in the case.
Though the CBI had demanded death penalty for all the accused, the Dehradun court had said the case was not the rarest of the rare and felt that the four deserved life punishment.
Madhumita was found murdered at her Lucknow flat on May 9, 2003. She was allegedly murdered at the behest of Amarmani's wife Madhumani after she learnt that the poet was having an affair with her husband.
Another version says, Madhumita was pregnant with Amarmani's child. He wanted her to abort, but she was against it and so he got her killed.
It has been a decade-long legal battle for the relatives of poetess Madhumita Shukla.
The case was first being heard in Uttar Pradesh, but Madhumita's relatives moved the Supreme Court seeking a transfer of the case outside the state fearing a lack of an impartial trial.
The case was then shifted to Dehradun, but her relatives alleged that despite Amarmani being arrested in 2003, they were under constant threat.
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