Manu Sharma, convicted for killing Jessica Lall, will not get an early release from jail, confirmed Delhi government’s review board.
Confirming to The Quint, officials from Delhi government said that the Sentence Review Board (SRB) of the Delhi government, on Thursday, 4 October, has rejected the early release application of Manu Sharma, Santosh Singh and Sushil Sharma.
Jessica Lall’s killer Manu Sharma is currently lodged in Tihar Jail in Delhi.
A Sentence Review Board (SRB) in Delhi held a meeting on Thursday, 4 October, to take a call on whether high-profile convicts Santosh Singh, Manu Sharma and Sushil Sharma should be released from prison.
While Santosh Singh had been convicted for the 1996 rape and murder of Priyadarshini Mattoo, Manu Sharma was behind the murder of model Jessica Lall in 1999. Sushil Sharma was convicted of murdering his wife Naina Sahni in the case which came to be known as the tandoor murder case.
WHAT WILL THE SRB MEETING BE ABOUT?
The name of Santosh Singh is a new addition to the list of inmates, whose names will be deliberated upon by the review board for an early release, said a Hindustan Times report citing officials. The decisions taken by the board are based on a review of the conduct of the inmates.
Regarding Santosh Singh's name in the list, a jail officer was quoted by Hindustan Times as saying:
As per the prison rules, we are duty-bound to include his name and send it to the SRB. His prison record is clean. He has not flouted any rule in the last 14 years.
The review board includes Delhi Home minister Satyendra Jain, Director-General (Prisons), Home secretary, Law secretary, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), a district judge and the chief probation officer appointed by the government.
The meeting on Thursday comes after a similar meeting on 24 June had reportedly "deferred" a decision regarding the release of Manu Sharma and Sushil Sharma. However, a Times of India report said that the pleas of the two convicts were rejected.
Notably, in March, Jessica Lall's sister Sabrina Lall had written a letter to Tihar Jail's welfare officer, saying that she didn't have any objection to an early release of Manu Sharma.
WHAT ARE THE CASES ABOUT?
In July 1995, Congress youth leader Sushil Sharma murdered his wife Naina Sahni. The body was chopped into pieces and put in a clay oven (tandoor). Convicted in 2006, Sharma was first given death sentence, but it was reduced to life imprisonment in 2013 by the apex court.
In 1996, Priyadarshini Mattoo, a student of Delhi University, was raped and murdered by Santosh Singh, who was the son of an IPS officer. While he was initially acquitted by a lower court, the Delhi High Court held him guilty in 2006 and awarded him death penalty. However, the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in 2010 by the SC.
In 1999, a Haryana Congress MP's son Manu Sharma shot Jessica Lall at a party in Delhi. In 2006, Sharma was first acquitted by a lower court and then convicted by the high court with life imprisonment, with the Supreme Court upholding his sentence in 2010.
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