Supreme Court denies mercy plea of ‘Swami’ serving life for killing Shakereh Khaleeli

The Supreme Court on Friday (December 5, 2025) declined to entertain a petition seeking a direction to the government to take an expeditious decision on the mercy plea of Swami Shraddhanand alias Murli Manohar Mishra, the 87-year-old self-styled godman serving a sentence of imprisonment for burying his wife alive in Bengaluru in 1991.

A Bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi dismissed the petition as withdrawn after expressing dissatisfaction with the submissions of advocate Varun Thakur, appearing for the petitioner. Mr. Thakur contended that the convict had spent 31 years in prison without a single day of parole and was now in a significantly deteriorated state of health.

Questioning the prolonged pendency of the proceedings, Justice Maheshwari observed that the petition had been adjourned on six earlier occasions at the petitioner’s behest. “Had this come before us earlier, we would have dismissed it on the very first day,” he remarked.

The Bench further noted that Shraddhanand had repeatedly failed to secure relief in the past, referring to earlier orders dismissing his review petition challenging the sentence of life imprisonment without remission, as well as multiple unsuccessful applications for parole.

Additional Solicitor-General K.M. Nataraj informed the Bench that the Union Government was awaiting the Karnataka Government’s opinion, since the State is the prosecuting authority in the case. “Once their response comes, we will process it immediately,” he said.

Three decades in prison

Opposing the Bench’s reluctance to intervene, Mr. Thakur argued that the self-styled godman had spent over three decades in prison “for a single incident,” even as those convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case had since been released. He then requested liberty to approach the State authorities. The Bench, however, dismissed the petition as withdrawn, declining to grant the permission sought.

Shraddhanand was convicted in 2000 for murdering his wife, Shakereh Khaleeli, in 1991 with the motive of taking control of her property. The crime came to light only in 1994, when the police exhumed her body from a 100-foot-deep ditch in the courtyard of her bungalow on Bengaluru’s Richmond Road. According to the prosecution, Shraddhanand had drugged her tea and buried her while she was unconscious.

Shakereh Khaleeli, the granddaughter of the former Dewan of Mysore, had earlier been married to a senior diplomat and was the mother of four daughters. She divorced him in 1986 and subsequently married Shraddhanand. Her gruesome murder later became the subject of a 2023 Amazon Prime Video docuseries titled Dancing on the Grave.

In 2008, a three-judge Bench of the top court commuted the death sentence earlier confirmed by the High Court to “imprisonment for life,” and directed that Shraddhanand “shall not be released from prison for the rest of his natural life.”

In October last year, the court dismissed a review petition challenging the sentence imposed. It reiterated that this special category of sentence had been affirmed in subsequent judgments, including the Constitution Bench ruling in Union of India V.V. Sriharan (2015).

In his review plea, Shraddhanand had contended that the sentence imposed upon him was not recognised in law, arguing that the court could either impose the death penalty or life imprisonment, but not imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life.