NEW DELHI, 20 February 2007 — The Delhi High Court yesterday upheld the death sentence for a politician from India’s ruling Congress party who roasted his unfaithful wife in the tandoor oven of a city restaurant. The Supreme Court meanwhile stayed the death sentence for the son of an influential police officer in another high-profile case.
The Delhi High Court confirmed the capital punishment handed down to Sushil Sharma by a lower court in 2005. Sharma had challenged the verdict.
On July 2, 1995, he shot 29-year-old Naina Sahni, a pilot, and stuffed her dismembered corpse into the tandoor of the state-run Bagiya restaurant in the heart of New Delhi.
The politician loaded kilos of butter into the clay oven in an attempt to incinerate the evidence, but the smell of burning flesh brought police to the restaurant.
High Court Judges R.S. Sodhi and P.K. Bhasin, rejecting Sharma’s petition that challenged his earlier sentencing in 2005, said the convict did not deserve to live.
“The offense was not committed on a spur of the moment as alleged by Sharma but it was an act of butchery, which leaves no room for compassion,” the judges said in the verdict.
“He had no value for human life and it would be a mockery of justice if his appeal is allowed,” the verdict, read to a packed courtroom, said.
“This offense has shaken the conscience of the society including this court and the post-offense conduct, showing no remorse for the offense, coupled with no regard for the dead body, warrants the death penalty,” it said.
Sharma, who was an official of the Congress party’s youth wing, was expelled from the movement after he fled from police. He was arrested after a five-week chase across India.
In what came to be known as the tandoor murder case, Sharma was awarded death sentence by Additional District Sessions Judge G.P. Thareja on Nov 7, 2003. Sharma’s accomplice Keshav Kumar, the manager of the open-air Bagiya restaurant on the premises of the erstwhile Ashok Yatri Niwas, too was convicted of conspiring to burn the body. He was given seven years’ rigorous imprisonment.
Sharma killed his wife Naina, suspecting her of infidelity. Sharma shot her dead during an argument at their residence in Gole Market in central Delhi.
The Supreme Court stayed the death sentence of Santosh Kumar Singh in the rape and murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo. The court admitted the appeal of Santosh, who is currently in the Tihar Jail, and issued a notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Santosh, the son of a top former police officer, had challenged his death sentence awarded by the Delhi High Court in October. He was acquitted by a trial court in 1999 due to lack of evidence. After a huge public outcry over the acquittal, the high court conducted day-to-day hearings and reversed the verdict.
— Additional input from agencies
