Supreme Court allows premature release of convict in 2003 poetess murder case

New : The Supreme Court on Friday granted premature release of Rohit Chaturvedi, one of the convicts in the 2003 murder case of 26-year-old poetess Madhumita Shukla.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan found that the accused has spent 22 years in jail without remission and observed that crime is one thing, reformation is different.

The court set aside the Ministry of Home Affairs' order of July 9, 2025, which rejected the Uttarakhand government's recommendation for the premature release of convict Rohit Chaturvedi.

The bench emphasized that the state’s focus should be reformation and not retribution, noting that Chaturvedi is already out on bail and need not surrender.

Poet Madhumita Shukla was shot dead on May 9, 2003 at her residence in Lucknow's Paper Mill Colony while she was pregnant. Former Uttar Pradesh minister Amarmani Tripathi was arrested in September 2003 in connection with the poet's killing. He was allegedly in a relationship with her. Subsequently, other accused were also arrested in connection with a conspiracy to kill Shukla.

In 2007, the trial court convicted Amarmani Tripathi, his wife Madhumani Tripathi, his nephew Rohit Chaturvedi and his associate Santosh Kumar Rai for Shukla's murder. The court sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Amarmani Tripathi, who was the MLA from Nautanwa, was a minister in the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh in 2001. He was also in the BSP government that was formed in 2002, and was also associated with the Samajwadi Party.