The Uttarakhand high court on Monday upheld the life imprisonment awarded to former Samajwadi Party MLA Amarmani Tripathi, his wife and two others in 2007 for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla in Lucknow in 2003.
A division bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Barin Ghosh and Justice U.C. Dhayani also awarded life imprisonment to Prakash Pandey, who was acquitted by the Dehradun CBI court for want of evidence. The court also directed the trial court to take Prakash Pandey into custody immediately. Pandey had been identified by Deshraj, a servant of Madhumita and a prime witness in the case.
Rejecting the petition of all the four convicts, the court said that no relief could be granted to Amarmani Tripathi or any other convict since their role in Madhumita Shukla murder has been proved beyond doubt by the CBI.
The high court verdict comes as a major blow for Amarmani who is presently lodged in Gorakhpur jail. The controversial politician was planning to contest the Lok Sabha polls because he was apparently confident that he would get respite from the high court. His wife and other accused are lodged in Dehradun jail. Amarmani, it may be recalled, has been hitting the headlines with an alarming frequency for his activities inside and outside the jail. Last year, he jumped his parole and absconded for almost two months. Then he made a video film from inside the jail in which he gave a full-fledged political speech for his son, Amanmani Tripathi, who unsuccessfully contested the recent assembly elections on a Samajwadi ticket. More recently, he booked a room for himself in the BRD medical college and is known to spend the entire day there, meeting his supporters.